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O. HENRY 



O. HENRY 
BIOGRAPHY 



BY 

C. ALPHONSO SMITH 

POE PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH IN THE 

UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA 

AUTHOR OF 

"WHAT CAN LITERATURE DO FOR ME," ETC. 




ILLUSTRATED 



Garden City New York 

DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 

1916 



— 



_ 






Copyright, 1916, by v 

DOUBLEDAT, PAGE & COMPANY 

All rights reserved, including that of 

translation into foreign languages, 

including the Scandinavian 




©CI.A445434-^_ 



PREFACE 

MY CHIEF indebtedness in the preparation of this 
book is to Mr. Arthur W. Page, of Garden City, New 
York. He has not only put at my disposal all of 
the material collected by the late Harry Peyton Steger 
but has been unfailing in helpful suggestion and in 
practical cooperation. To the authorities of the Li- 
brary of Congress and of the Free Public Library of 
Greensboro, North Carolina, I am also indebted for 
services cheerfully and effectively rendered. Others 
from whom I have received valuable oral or written 
information are mentioned for the most part in the 
pages that follow. Grateful acknowledgments are 
due also to Mrs. J. Allison Hodges and Mrs. E. E. 
Moffitt, of Richmond, Virginia; Professor James C. 
Bardin, of the University of Virginia; Miss Anna Porter 
Boyers, of Nashville, Tennessee; Miss Bettie Caldwell, 
Mr. S. A. Kerr, Mr. A. W. McAlister, Colonel James 
T. Morehead, Miss Belle Swaim, and Mrs. G. W. Whit- 
sett, of Greensboro; Mrs. G. B. Bush, of Hopkins, South 
Carolina; Mr. J. W. Monget, of Baton Rouge, Louisi- 
ana; Mr. George M. Bailey, of Houston, Judge T. M. 
Paschal, of San Antonio, Mr. David Harrell, Professor 



PREFACE 

John A. Lomax, Mr. Ed. R. McLean, Mr. Herman 
Pressler, Professor J. F. Royster, and Mr. William H. 
Stacy, of Austin, Texas; Mr. Landon C. Bell and Mr. 
Howard P. Rhoades, of Columbus, Ohio. 



CONTENTS 

TAOW 

Preface v 

I. The Life and the Story 8 

II. Vogue .... 8 

III. Ancestry 16 

IV. Birthplace and Early Years 46 

V. Ranch and City Life in Texas 95 

VI. The Shadowed Years 136 

VII. Finding Himself in New York 172 

VIII. Favourite Themes - ... 203 

IX. Last Days 246 

Index 253 



ILLUSTRATIONS 
O. Henry Frontispiece 



FACING PAGE 



O. Henry's Parents 26 

Edgeworth Female Seminary 56 

Judge Tourgee Leaving Greensboro .... 60 

Interior of Clark Porter's Drug Store .... 86 

General Land Office, Austin, Texas .... 120 

Specimen Page of the Rolling Stone .... 126 

The Caledonia 186 

No. 55 Irving Place. An Early New York Home 

of O. Henry 200 

Heart of O. Henry Land . . 232 



IX 



O. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 



CHAPTER ONE 

THE LIFE AND THE STORY 

O. HENRY was once asked why he did not read more 
fiction. "It is all tame," he replied, "as compared with 
the romance of my own life." But nothing is more 
subtly suggestive in the study of this remarkable man 
than the strange, structural resemblance between the 
story and the life. Each story is a miniature auto- 
biography, for each story seems to summarize the four 
successive stages in his own romantic career. 

First, the reader notices in an O. Henry story the 
quiet but arrestive beginning. There is interest, a bit 
of suspense, and a touch of distinction in the first para- 
graph; but you cannot tell what lines of action are to be 
stressed, what complications of character and incident 
are to follow, or whether the end is to be tragic or comic, 
a defeat or a victory. So was the first stage of his life. 
The twenty years spent in Greensboro, North Carolina, 
were comparatively uneventful. There was little in 
them of prospect, though they loom large with signifi- 
cance in the retrospect. O. Henry was always unique. 
When as a freckle-faced boy, freckled even to the feet, 



O. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 

he played his cuildish pranks on young and old and told 
his marvellous yarns of knightly adventure or Indian 
ambuscade, every father and mother and boy and girl 
felt that he was different from others of his kind. As 
he approached manhood, his "somnolent little Southern 
town" recognized in him its most skilful cartoonist 
of local character and its ablest interpreter of local 
incident. Moliere has been called "the composite 
smile of mankind." O. Henry was the composite 
smile of Greensboro. 

In the second stage of an O. Henry story the lines 
begin suddenly to dip toward a plot or plan. Still 
water becomes running water. It is the stage of the 
first guess. Background and character, dialogue and 
incident, sparkle and sly thrust, aspiration and adven- 
ture, seem to be spelling out something definite and 
resultant. You cannot guess the end but you cannot 
help trying. In terms of his life this was O. Henry's 
second or Texas period. Had he died at the age of 
twenty, before leaving Greensboro, he would have left 
a local memory and a local cult, but they would have 
remained local. A few would have said that with 
wider opportunities he would have been heard from in a 
national way. But when letters began to come from 
Texas telling of his life on the ranch and later of his 
adventures in local journalism, and when "W. S. 
Porter" signed to a joke or skit or squib in Truth or 
4 



THE LIFE AND THE STORY 

Up to Date or the Detroit Free Press became more and 
more a certificate of the worth while, those of us who 
remained in the home town began to prophesy with 
some assurance that he would soon join the staff of 
some great metropolitan newspaper or magazine and 
win national fame as a cartoonist or travelling cor- 
respondent. 

The third stage of an O. Henry story is reached 
when you find that your first forecast is wrong. This 
is the stage of the first surprise. Something has hap- 
pened that could not or would not have happened if 
the story was to end as you at first thought. You 
must give up the role of prophet or at least readjust 
your prophecy to the demands of an ending wholly 
different from that at first conjectured. This stage 
in the life was reached in 1898, when misfortune, swift, 
pitiless, and seemingly irretrievable, overtook him. 
His life had hitherto developed uniformly, like the 
advance of a rolling ball. ^It had permitted and even 
invited some sort of conjecture as to his ultimate place 
in the work of the world. But now his destiny seemed 
as incalculable as the blind movements of a log in the 
welter of the sea. 

The fourth and last stage in an O. Henry story, the 
stage of the second surprise, is marked by light out of 
darkness. Lines of character and characterization, 
of hap or mishap, converge to a triumphant conclusion. 

5 




0. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 

We are surprised, happily surprised, and then sur- 
prised again that we should have been surprised at 
first. Says Nicholas Vachel Lindsay: 

He always worked a triple-hinged surprise 
To end the scene and make one rub his eyes/ 

The end was inherent in the beginning, however, though 
we did not see it. But the greatest surprise and the 
happiest surprise is found in the last stage of O. Henry's 
life. This was his New York period, the culmination 
of tendencies and impulses that we now know had stirred 
mightily within him from the beginning. Eight years 
had passed, however, years of constant and constantly 
deepening development, and not a word had drifted 
back to the home town from him or about him since 
1898. His pencil sketches were still affectionately 
cherished and had grown in historic value as well as 
in personal significance as the years had passed. They 
furnished a bond of common memory and happy as- 
sociation wherever Greensboro men foregathered, though 
the fun and admiration that they occasioned were 
mellowed by the thought of what might have been. 
Now came the discovery, through a photograph pub- 
lished in a New York magazine, that O. Henry, vari- 
ously styled "the American Kipling/' "the American 
de Maupassant," "the American Gogol," "our Field- 
ing a la mode," "the Bret Harte of the city," "the 
6 



THE LIFE AND THE STORY 

Y. M. C. A. Boccaccio," "the Homer of the Tender- 
loin," "the 20th century Haroun Al-Raschid," "the 
discoverer and interpreter of the romance of New 
York," "the greatest living master of the short story," 
was Will Porter of Greensboro. No story that he has 
written quite equals this in reserved surprise or in real 
and permanent achievement. 

The technique of the story, however, is the technique 
of the life. But the life is more appealing than the 
story. 



CHAPTER TWO 

VOGUE 

WILLIAM SYDNEY PORTER, better known as O. 
Henry, was born in Greensboro, Guilford County, 
North Carolina, September 11, 1862. He died in 
New York City, June 5, 1910. Before the Porter 
family Bible was found, his birth year varied from 1867 
to 1864, from "about the close of the war" to a ques- 
tion mark. There is no doubt that O. Henry used 
the author's traditional right to mystify his readers in 
regard to his age and to the unessential facts of his life. 
An admirer once wrote to him begging to know by 
return mail whether he was a man or a woman. But 
the stamped envelope enclosed for reply remains still 
unused. " If you have any applications from publishers 
for photos of myself," he wrote to Mr. Witter Bynner, 
"or 'slush' about the identity of O. Henry, please 
refuse. Nobody but a concentrated idiot would write 
over a pen-name and then tack on a lot of twaddle about 
himself. I say this because I am getting some letters 
from reviewers and magazines wanting pictures, etc., 
and I am positively declining in every case."<£"" 

There has thus grown up a sort of O. Henry myth. 
8 



VOGUE 

"It threatens to attain," said the New York Sun five 
years after his death, "the proportions of the Steven- 
son myth, which was so ill-naturedly punctured by 
Henley. It appears to be inevitably the fate of "the 
writers' writer' — and O. Henry comes under this 
heading notwithstanding his work's universal appeal 
— to disintegrate into a sort of grotesque myth after 
his death. As a matter of fact Sydney Porter was, 
in a sort of a way, a good deal of a myth before he died. 
He was so inaccessible that a good many otherwise 
reasonable people who unsuccessfully sought to pene- 
trate his cordon and to force their way into his cloister 
drew bountifully upon their imaginations to save their 
faces and to mask their failure." 

But however mythical his personality, O. Henry's 
work remains the most solid fact to be reckoned with 
in the history of twentieth-century American literature. 
"More than any author who ever wrote in the United 
States," says Mr. Stephen Leacock,* "O. Henry is an 
American writer. And the time is coming, let us hope, 
when the whole English-speaking world will recognize 
in him one of the great masters of modern literature." 
If variety and range of appeal be an indication, O. 
Henry would seem to be approaching the time thus 
prophesied. He has won the three classes of readers, 

♦See the chapter on "The Amazing Genius of O.- Henry" (in Essays and Literary Studies.) 
A London reviewer of Mr. Leacock's book singles out for special praise the chapter on O. Henry, 
placing him "on a level with the great masters, Poe or Maupassant or Cable." 

9 



O. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 

those who work with their brains, those who work 
with their hands, and those who mingle the two in 
varying but incalculable proportions. The ultra-con- 
servatives and the ultra-radicals, the critical and the 
uncritical, the bookmen and the business men, the 
women who serve and those who only stand and wait, 
all have enlisted under his banner. "The men and 
women whom I have in mind," writes Mr. W. J. 
Ghent, author of "Socialism and Success," "are social 
reformers, socialists, radicals, and progressives of 
various schools, practical and theoretical workers in 
the fields of social and political science. Some of these 
persons read Marx; most of them read H. G. Wells 
and John Galsworthy; but all of them are much more 
likely to read bluebooks and the Survey than the 
current fiction which contains no 'message.' Yet it 
was just among these persons, so far as my individual 
acquaintance goes, that O. Henry established himself 
as a writer almost at the beginning of his career." 

"When I was a freshman in Harvard College," 
writes Mr. John S. Reed in the American Magazine, 
"I stood one day looking into the window of a book- 
store on Harvard Square at a new volume of O. Henry. 
A quietly dressed, unimpressive man with a sparse, 
dark beard came up and stood beside me. Said he, 
suddenly: 'Have you read the new one?' 'No/ I said. 
'Neither have I. I've read all the others, though.' 
10 



VOGUE 

'He's great, don't you think?' ' Bully," replied the 
quietly dressed man; 'let's go in and buy this one." 
The quietly dressed man was William James. 

A writer is not often called a classic until at least 
a half century has set its seal upon his best work. 
But Mr. Edward Garnett,* the English author, re- 
viewer, and critic, admits to "the shelf of my prized 
American classics" seven authors. They are Poe, 
Thoreau, Whitman, Stephen Crane, Miss Sarah Orne 
Jewett, Mr. W. D. Howells, and O. Henry, though O. 
Henry published his first book in 1904. Professor 
Henry Seidel Canby, author of "The Short Story in 
English," thinks that the technique of the short story 
has undergone marked changes in recent years, "es- 
pecially since O. Henry took the place of Kipling as a 
literary master." Mr. James Lane Allen believes 
that the golden age of the American short story closed 
about 1895. "The best of the American short stories," 
he says, "written during that period [1870-1895], 
outweigh in value those that have been written later — 
with the exception of those of one man . . . the 
one exception is O. Henry. He alone stands out in 
the later period as a world within himself, as much apart 
from any one else as are Hawthorne and Poe." 

Mr. Henry James Forman, author of "In the Foot- 



*See "Some Remarks on American and English Fiction" {Atlantic Monthly, December, 
1914). 

11 



O. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 

prints of Heine," finds also that, with one exception, 
there has been a decline in the short story as a dis- 
tinct genre. "Publishers still look upon it somewhat 
askance,"hewrites,*"asononeunderacloud,andauthors, 
worldly-wise, still cling to the novel as the unquestioned 
leader. But here and there a writer now boldly brings 
forth a book of short tales, and the publisher does his 
part. The stigma of the genre is wearing off, and for 
the rehabilitation one man is chiefly responsible. Mr. 
Sydney Porter, the gentleman who, in the language of 
some of his characters, is 'denounced' by the euphoni- 
ous pen-name of O. Henry, has breathed new life into 
the short story." After a tentative comparison with 
Frangois Villon, Dickens, and Maupassant, Mr. For- 
man concludes: "It is idle to compare 0. Henry with_y 
anybody. No talent could be more original or more 
delightful. The combination of technical excellence 
with whimsical sparkling wit, abundant humour, and 
a fertile invention is so rare that the reader is content 
without comparisons." The Nation,^ after indicating 
the qualities that seem to differentiate him from 
Kipling and Mark Twain, summarizes in a single 
sentence: "O. Henry is actually that rare bird of which 
we so often hear false reports — a born story teller." 

Professor William Lyon Phelps in "The Advance 
of the English Novel" puts O. Henry among the five 

♦The North American Review, May, 1908. 
t July 4, 1907. 

12 



VOGUE 

greatest American short story writers. "No writer of 
distinction," he continues, "has, I think, been more 
closely identified with the short story in English 
than O. Henry. Irving, Poe, Hawthorne, Bret Harte, 
Stevenson, Kipling attained fame in other fields; but 
although Porter had his mind fully made up to launch 
what he hoped would be the great American novel, 
the veto of death intervened, and the many volumes 
of his 'complete works' are made up of brevities. The 
essential truthfulness of his art is what gave his work 
immediate recognition, and accounts for his rise from 
journalism to literature. There is poignancy in his 
pathos; desolation in his tragedy; and his extraordinary 
humour is full of those sudden surprises that give us 
delight. Uncritical readers have never been so deeply 
impressed with O. Henry as have the professional, 
jaded critics, weary of the old trick a thousand times 
repeated, who found in his writings a freshness and 
originality amounting to genius." 

There is no doubt that the jaded critics extended a 
warm welcome to O. Henry, but that they were more 
hospitable than the uncritical admits of question. For 
several years I have made it a practice in all sorts of un- 
academic places, where talk was abundant, to lead the 
conversation if possible to O. Henry. The result has 
been a conviction that O. Henry is to-day not less 
"the writers' writer" but still more the people's writer. 

13 



J 



O. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 

Travelling a few years ago through a Middle Western 
Si ale, during an intolerable drought, I fell into con- 
versation with a man the burden of whose speech was 
"I've made my pile and now I'm going away to live." 
He was plainly an unlettered man but by no means 
ignorant. He talked interestingly, because genuinely, 
until he put the usual question: "What line of goods do 
you carry?" When I had to admit my unappealing 
profession his manner of speech became at once formal 
and distant. "Professor," he said, after a painful 
pause, "Emerson is a very elegant writer, don't you 
think so?" I agreed and also agreed, after another 
longer and more painful pause, that Prescott was a very 
elegant writer. These two names plus "elegant" 
seemed to exhaust his available supply of literary al- 
lusion. "Did you ever read 0. Henry?" I asked. 
At the mention of the name his manner changed in- 
stantly and his eyes moistened. Leaning far over he 
said: "Professor, that's literature, that's literature, that's 
real literature ." He was himself again now. The mask 
of affectation had fallen away, and the appreciation 
and knowledge of O. Henry's work that he displayed, 
the affection for the man that he expressed, the grateful 
indebtedness that he was proud to acknowledge for a 
kindlier and more intelligent sympathy with his fellow- 
men showed plainly that O. Henry was the only writer who 
had ever revealed the man's better nature to himself. 
14 



VOGUE 

The incident is typical. The jaded critics and the 
short story writers read O. Henrv and admire him: 
they find in him what they want. Those who do not 
criticise and do not write read him and love him: they 
find in him what they need — a range of fancy, an exuber- 
ance of humour, a sympathy, an understanding, a 
knowledge of the raw material of life, an ability to 
interpret the passing in terms of the permanent, an 
insight into individual and institutional character, a 
resolute and pervasive desire to help those in need of 
help, in a word a constant and essential democracy 
that they find in no other short story writer. But the 
deeper currents in 0. Henry's work can be traced only 
through a wider knowledge of 0. Henry the man. 



15 



CHAPTER THREE 

ANCESTRY 

THE O. Henry myth could not forever withstand the 
curiosity and inquiry begotten by the increasing ac- 
claim that the stories were beginning to receive. 0. 
Henry himself must have recognized the futility of 
attempting a further mystification, for there is evident 
in his later years a willingness and even a desire to 
throw off the mask of the assumed name and thus to 
link his achievement with the name and fortunes of his 
family. 'He had sought freedom and self-expression 
through his writings rather than fame^ In fact, he 
shunned publicity with the timidity of a child. "What 
used to strike me most forcibly in 0. Henry," writes 
Mr. John H. Barry, who knew him from the beginning 
of his career in New York, "was his distinction of 
character. To those he knew and liked he revealed 
himself as a man of singular refinement. He had beau- 
tiful, simple manners, a low voice, and a most charming 
air of self-effacement. For the glory of being famous 
he cared little. He had a dislike of being lionized. 
Lion-hunting women filled him with alarm. In fact, 
he was afraid of nearly all women." 
16 



ANCESTRY 

But fame had come and with it came a vein of ancestral 
reminiscence and a return in imagination to the days of 
childhood. His marriage, in 1907, to the sweetheart and 
the only sweetheart of the Greensboro years, his visits to 
Mrs. Porter's home in Asheville, and his affectionate al- 
lusions to his father and mother show plainly a tend- 
ency to relax the cordon about him and to re-knit the 
ties and associations of youth. O. Henry was becom- 
ing Will Porter again. Even the great American novel, 
of which Professor Phelps speaks, was to be in the 
nature of an autobiography. "Let Me Feel Your 
Pulse," the last complete story that he wrote, was also 
the most autobiographical. "It was written," says 
Dr. Pinkney Herbert, of Asheville, "with the aid of 
my medical books. Sometimes he would take them to 
his office and again he would sit in my outer office." 
It was heralded by the magazine announcement, "If 
you want to get well, read this story." But O. Henry 
was dead before the story was published. In it he speaks 
of his ancestors who blended the blood of North and South : 

"It's the haemoglobin test," he [the doctor] explained. "The 
color of your blood is wrong." "Well," said I, "I know it should 
be blue; but this is a country of mix-ups. Some of my ancestors 
were cavaliers; but they got thick with some people on Nantucket 
Island, so " 

His forebears were again in his mind when, wrenched 
with pain but not bowed, he went to the hospital 

17 



O. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 

in New York from which he knew he would not return 
alive. Will Irwin describes the scene as follows :* 

Then as he stepped from the elevator to the ward, a kind of 
miracle came over him. Shy, sensitive, guarding the bare nerve- 
ends of his soul with an affectation of flippancy, his gait had 
always been furtive, his manner shrinking. Now he walked 
nobly, his head up, his chest out, his feet firm — walked as earls 
walked to the scaffold. Underneath all that democracy of life 
and love of the raw human heart which made him reject the 
prosperous and love the chatter of car-conductors and shop-girls 
— that quality which made Sydney Porter "O. Henry" — lay 
pride in his good Southern blood. It was as though he sum- 
moned all this pride of blood to help him fight the last battle like 
a man and a Sydney. 

Thus 

After Last returns the First, 

Though a wide compass round be fetched. 

William Sydney Porter was named after his mother's 
father, William Swaim, and his father's father, Sidney 
Porter, f He was always called Will Porter in the early 
days except by his grandmother on his father's side 
who occasionally called him Sydney. He never 
saw either of his grandfathers, both dying long before 
he was born. But William Swaim, his mother's father, 
who died in 1835, left his impress upon the State and 
was, so far as can be learned, the only journalist or 
writer among 0. Henry's ancestors. The ink in O. 
Henry's blood came from this Quaker grandparent, 

♦"O. Henry, Man and Writer" (in the Cosmopolitan, September, 1910). 

fO. Henry changed the spelling of his middle name from Sidney to Sydney in 1898. Seepage 1691 

18 



ANCESTRY 

whose ancestor, also William Swaim, emigrated from 
Holland about the year 1700 and is buried in Richmond, 
Staten Island, his descendants having moved to North 
Carolina at least ten years before the Revolutionary 
War. William Swaim, O. Henry's grandfather, did 
not found the Greensboro Patriot, of which he became 
editor in 1827, but he had the good sense to change its 
name from the ponderous Patriot and Greensboro Pal- 
ladium to the simpler title that it has since borne. He 
does not seem to me to have been as able or as well 
balanced a man as Lyndon Swaim who, strangely 
enough, though not ascertainably related, was soon to 
succeed William Swaim both as editor and as husband 
and thus to become the only father that O. Henry's 
mother knew. 

William Swaim had convictions and he hewed to 
the line. When "the nabob gentry" of Greensboro, 
as he called them, sought to bend the Patriot to their 
own purposes, he wrote as follows (May 30, 1832) : 

They soon learned from our tone that we would sooner beg for 
bread and be free than to compromise our principles for a seat 
upon a tawdry throne of corruption. Still bent upon the fell 
purpose of preventing, if possible, an unshackled press from 
growing into public favor, their last resort was to ransack hell, 
from the centre to the circumference, for slanderous fabrications; 
and these have been heaped upon us, without cause and without 
mercy, even until now. But thanks to a generous public, they 
have thus far sustained us "through evil as well as through good 
report," and we would rather bask for one hour in their approving 

19 



O. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 

smiles than to spend a whole eternity amidst the damning grins 
of a concatenation of office-hunters, despots, demagogues, tyrants, 
fools, and hypocrites. 

When subscribers subscribed but took French leave, 
Editor Swaim threw the lasso after them in this wise: 

STOP THE RUNAWAYS! 

The following is a list of gentlemen who, after reading our 
paper for a time, have politely disappeared and left us the "bag 
to hold." We give the name of each, together with the amount 
due, and the place of his residence at the time he patronized us. 
Should this publication meet the eye of any delinquents and should 
they yet conclude to forward to us the amount due, we will pub- 
licly acknowledge the receipt and restore him who sends it to 
better credit than an act of the legislature could possibly give. 
Any person who will favor us with information of the residence 
of any or all of these absentees shall have the right to claim the 
homage of our sincere thanks : 

Joseph Aydelotte, Esq., Guilford County, North Carolina. 
Twelve dollars. 

John Lackey, Tarboro. Nine dollars. 

James Hiatt, not recollected. Nine dollars. 

William Atkinson, unknown. Nine dollars. 

Jacob Millers, not recollected. Nine dollars. 

Joseph Bryan, whipt anyhow and may be hung. Six dollars. 

Is there not at least a hint of 0. Henry in this "unex- 
pected crack of the whip at the end?" 

William Swaim believed that the lines had fallen 
to him in an evil age. He was an ardent Whig, a bitter 
opponent of Jackson and all things Jacksonian, a fear- 
less and independent fighter for the right as he saw the 
20 



ANCESTRY 

right, and an equal foe of fanaticism in the North and 
of slavery in the South. His style was ponderous 
rather than weighty, the humour being entirely uncon- 
scious. "I am surprised," he writes, "that my old 
friend Jonathan suffered this limb of the law to put 
afloat under the sanction of his name such a tissue of 
falsehood, malignity, and spleen." One must go to Jeff 
Peters of "The Gentle Grafter" for a sentence the equal 
of that. "Let me tell you first," said Jeff, "about these 
barnacles that clog the wheels of society by poisoning 
the springs of rectitude with their upas-like eye." 

The ablest thing that this grandfather of 0. Henry 
ever wrote was a protest against slavery. He was an 
advocate of the gradual emancipation of the slaves, a 
society for this purpose having been formed at Center, 
ten miles from Greensboro, as early as 1816. Center 
was a Quaker stronghold, its most influential family 
being the Worth family, to which 0. Henry's grand- 
mother on his father's side belonged. Hinton Rowan 
Helper, the most famous of North Carolina's aboli- 
tionists, refers to the valiant services of Daniel Worth in 
"The Impending Crisis," a book often compared with 
"Uncle Tom's Cabin" as a sort of co-herald of the doom 
of slavery. "William Swaim was greeted," says Cart- 
land,* "with a storm of abuse, but he boldly published 
his sentiments and often gave the threatening letters 

♦See "Southern Heroes or the Friends in War Time," by Fernando G. Cartland. 

21 



0. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 

which he received a conspicuous place in the Patriot." 
In 1882 Daniel R. Goodloe writes to Lyndon Swaim 
from Washington, D. C: 

William Swaim in 1830 published a pamphlet entitled "An 
Address to the People of North Carolina on the Evils of Slavery" 
with mottoes in Latin and English. The imprint is "William 
Swaim, Printer, Greensboro, N. C. 1830." Some twenty-seven 
or thirty years ago the abolitionists of New York republished, I 
suppose, & facsimile of the original, and Mr. Spofford, the librarian 
of Congress, has procured a copy. He asked me who was the 
author, as it is a rule with him to give, as far as possible, the name 
of every author. I should have quoted in the title that it purports 
to be written and published "By the Friends of Liberty and 
Equality." William Swaim introduces the address with a few 
words over his signature, stating that it emanates from the " Board 
of Managers of the Manumission Society of North Carolina." 
I will thank you to write me all you know of this Manumission 
Society and of the authorship of this pamphlet. The pamphlet 
does great honor to all concerned with it, and their names should 
be known in this day of universal liberty. 

0. Henry's grandmother, who married Lyndon Swaim 
after the death of her husband William Swaim, was Abia 
Shirley (or Abiah Shirly), daughter of Daniel Shirley, 
a wealthy planter, of Princess Anne County, Virginia. 
"The original Abia Shirley," O. Henry once remarked 
to an intimate friend in New York, "was related to 
the House of Stuart but she ran off with a Catholic 
priest." Where 0. Henry learned this bit of ancestral 
history I do not know; but that the Shirley family 
to which his grandmother traced her lineage was 
22 



ANCESTRY 

among the most loyal adherents of the Stuarts admits 
of little doubt. A letter from Charles II to the widow 
of Sir Robert Shirley, Sir Robert having died in the 
Tower "after seven times being imprisoned there and 
suspected to be poisoned by the Usurper Oliver Crom- 
well," runs as follows:* 

Brusselles 20 Oct. 1657. 

It hath been my particular care of you that I have this long 
deferred to lament with you the greate losse that you and I have 
sustained, least insteede of comforting, I might farther expose 
you to the will of those who will be glad of any occasion to do you 
further prejudice; but I am promised that this shall be put safely 
into your hands, though it may be not so soone as I wish; and I 
am very willing you should know, which I suppose you cannot 
doubte, that I bear a greate parte with you of your affliction and 
whenever it shall be in my power to make it lighter, you shall see 
I retayne a very kinde memory of your frinde by the care I shall 
have of you and all his relations: and of this you may depende 
upon the worde of 

your very affectionate 

Frinde Charles R. 

This Sir Robert Shirley, who met his death in 1656, 
was one of the Shirley s of Wiston (or Whiston), in 
Sussex, though he lived in Leicestershire; and it was 
after Sir Thomas Shirley of Wiston that Shirley, the 
beautiful old Virginia place, was named. f Built at 
an unknown date just above the point where the 
Appomattox River enters the James, this historic 

♦See "Stemmata Shirleiana" (1841), which makes, however, no references to the American 
Shirleys. 

tSee "Historic Virginia Homes and Churches," by Robert A. Lancaster, Jr. 

23 



O. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 

home, with its three lofty stories and two-storied 
porches, its wide-spreading lawn and massive oaks, 
contests with Monticello the primacy among Virginia's 
ancestral seats. Here was born Anne Hill Carter, the 
wife of Light Horse Harry Lee and the mother of Robert 
E. Lee. As far back as 1622, in the history of the 
Indian massacre of that year, the Plantation of West 
Shirley in Virginia is mentioned as one of the "five or 
six well-fortified places" into which the survivors gath- 
ered for defense. It was from the Shirleys of Wiston, 
who gave the name to the plantation and later to the 
home, that the Shirley family of Princess Anne County 
always traced their descent. Though I have been 
unable to find an Abia Shirley antedating O. Henry's 
grandmother, William Swaim, in a letter lying before 
me, dated Greensboro, N. C, May 22, 1830, speaks of 
Nancy Shirley, his wife's sister, "who had intermarried 
with Thomas Bray." It is at least a noteworthy coin- 
cidence that a sixteenth-century Beatrix Shirley of 
Wiston married "Sir Edward Bray, the elder, of 
Vachery, Surrey County, Knight." * 

But whether "the original Abia Shirley" was fact 
or fancy, it is certain that the Abia Shirley, who be- 
came O. Henry's grandmother, lived a gracious and 
exemplary life in Greensboro and bequeathed a memory 
still cherished by the few friends who survive her. 

* "Stemmata Shirleiana." 

24 



ANCESTRY 

The following obituary notice, signed "A Friend," 
appeared in the Patriot of January, 1858: 

Died. — In this place on Monday morning, January 18th, Mrs. 
Abia Swaim, wife of Lyndon Swaim, in the 50th year of her age. 
For nearly two years Mrs. Swaim had been confined to her room, 
and most of that time to her bed, by consumption — constantly 
in pain, which she patiently endured with great Christian forti- 
tude. She leaves an affectionate husband and a devoted daughter 
to mourn their loss. In her death the "poor and the needy" 
have been deprived of an invaluable friend; for no one in this 
community was more ready to contribute to the relief of poverty 
and hunger than the subject of this notice. She was always ready 
to watch around the sick bed of her friends, and all who knew her 
were her friends; I believe she had no enemies. 

Mrs. Swaim was a native of Eastern Virginia — her maiden name 
being Shirly. On arriving to womanhood, she removed to this 
place with her sister, the late Mrs. Carbry, and was afterward 
united in marriage with William Swaim. He dying, she remained 
a widow several years, when she was married to Lyndon Swaim. 

She embraced religion in her youth, and for a quarter of a cen- 
tury lived an exemplary and acceptable member of the Methodist 
Episcopal Church, exhibiting on all occasions a strong and lively 
faith in the efficacy of the blood of Christ; and while her friends 
drop many sympathizing tears with her bereaved family, they can 
in their sorrow" all rejoice in full assurance that her never-dying 
spirit is now united with that of a sweet infant daughter who pre- 
ceded her to heaven; and that at the great resurrection morn, her 
body will be raised to life everlasting. May we all strive to 
imitate her many virtues, that when the summons of death comes, 
we may be able to die as she died, at peace with God and man, and 
gently close our eyes in sleep. 

The "devoted daughter" was Mary Jane Virginia 
Swaim, O. Henry's mother. She was twenty-five years 

25 



O. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 

old at the time of her mother's death and married Dr. 
Algernon Sidney Porter three months later. Only- 
seven years had passed when the Patriot bore the fol- 
lowing announcement: 

DIED 

In Greensboro, N. C, September 26, 1865, Mrs. Mary V. 
Porter, wife of Dr. A. S. Porter, and only child of the late William 
Swaim. Mrs. Porter leaves a devoted husband and three small 
children, together with numerous friends to mourn her early death. 
She gave, in her last moments, most satisfactory evidence that 
she had made her peace with God, and her friends can entertain 
no doubt of her happiness in the spirit land. She was aged about 
thirty years; was a graduate of Greensboro Female College; and 
possessed mental faculties of high order, finely developed by 
careful training. Her death is a great social loss to our commun- 
ity; but especially to her affectionate husband and three little 
children. Her disease was consumption. 

Whether 0. Henry remembered his mother or not it 
would be impossible to say. Certain it is that he 
cherished the thought of her with a devotion and pride 
and sense of temperamental indebtedness that he felt 
for no one else, nor for all his other relatives put to- 
gether. Whatever vein of quiet humour marked his 
allusions to the other members of his family or to his 
family history, his mother's name was held apart. 
She was to him "a thing ensky'd and sainted." There 
was always an aureole about her. The poems that 
she wrote and the pictures that she painted — or rather 
the knowledge that she had written poems and painted 
26 



ANCESTRY 

pictures — exercised a directive and lasting influence 
upon him. Had she lived she would have given to 
the Porter home an atmosphere that it never had after 
1865. She would have enabled her gifted son to find 
himself many years earlier than he did and she would 
have brought him to his goal not 

By a route obscure and lonely 

but along the broad highway of common tastes and 
common sympathies. 

Lyndon Swaim gave his step-daughter every educa- 
tional advantage that Greensboro offered and then 
as now no town in North Carolina offered as many to 
women. There were two colleges for women on old 
West Market Street, both very near and one almost 
opposite the house in which O. Henry's mother was to 
spend all of her short married life. Both institutions 
had already begun to attract students from other 
Southern States. One was the Greensboro Female 
College, now the Greensboro College for Women, a 
Methodist school, the corner-stone of which was laid 
in 1843 and the later history of which has been the 
romance of education in North Carolina. The other 
was the Edgeworth Female Seminary, a Presbyterian 
school, founded and owned by Governor John Motley 
Morehead, whose influence on the industrial and cul- 
tural development of the State remains as yet unequalled. 

27 



O. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 

Edgeworth opened its doors in 1840 and was burned 
in 1872. O. Henry's mother attended both schools, 
graduating from the Greensboro Female College in 
1850, the year in which Dr. Charles F. Deems assumed 
control. Her graduating essay bore the strangely 
prophetic title, "The Influence of Misfortune on the 
Gifted." 

She entered Edgeworth at the age of twelve and 
during her one session there she studied Bullion's 
"English Grammar," Bolmar's "Physics," Lin- 
coln's "Botany," besides receiving "instruction in the 
higher classes and in the French language." During 
her four years at the Greensboro Female College she 
studied rhetoric, algebra, geometry, logic, astronomy, 
White's "Universal History," Butler's "Analogy of 
Religion, Natural and Revealed, to the Constitution 
and Course of Nature," and Alexander's "Evidences 
of the Authenticity, Inspiration, and Canonical Au- 
thority of the Holy Scriptures." She specialized in 
French and later in painting and drawing. The fly- 
leaves of her copy of Alexander's "Evidences" — and 
doubtless of Butler's "Analogy" if it could be found — 
are covered with selections from her favourite poets, 
while dainty sketches of gates, trees, houses, and 
flowers, filling the inter-spaces, show that she relieved 
the tedium of classroom lectures exactly as her son was 
to do thirty years later. 
28 



ANCESTRY 

That O. Henry's mother was an unusually bright 
scholar is attested by both teachers and classmates. 
Rev. Solomon Lea, the first President of the Greens- 
boro Female College, writes December 1, 1846, to 
Lyndon Swaim: "Your daughter Mary ranks No. 1 
in her studies, has an excellent mind, and will no doubt 
make a fine scholar." Says one of her classmates, 
Mrs. Henry Tate: "Mary Swaim was noted in her 
school days as a writer of beautiful English and the 
school girls came to depend upon her for their com- 
positions. She wrote most of the graduating essays 
for the students." Mrs. Tate adds that O. Henry 
resembled his mother in personal appearance and in 
traits of character. 

The following letter, written by her at the age of 
fifteen to her step-father, almost the only letter of 
O. Henry's mother that has been preserved, seems 
here and there to hint if it does not fore-announce 
something of the humorous playfulness of the son. 
Note especially the tendency to give an unexpected 
turn to common sayings and quotations, a device that 
became in 0. Henry's hands an art: 

Greensboro, Sept. 21, 1848. 

Dear Father: Your letter reached us last Monday, having 
come by Raleigh as also did Dr. Mebane's. We were very anxious 
to hear from you before we received your letter, but it came like an 
"Angel's visit" bringing peace to our anxious minds. We are all 

29 



0. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 

well at present and want to see you very much. Your letter was 
very interesting to us all from its being a description of your 
travels. From what you wrote I should judge you had not re- 
ceived my letter which I wrote agreeable to your request. Mother 
says she is very glad to hear that your health is improving and 
she wants to see you when you come home looking as portly as 
Dr. Cole* or Governor Morehead. There is no news of interest 
stirring in town at this time. Last Sunday evening there was a 
sudden death in the Methodist Church. A negro belonging to 
Mrs. Bencini was either shouting or talking to the mourners 
when she fell dead on the spot. Mr. Armfield's daughter died 
last week. There is little or no sickness in town at present. 

Sherwood you know always does keep a "stiff upper lip" for he 
rarely if ever shaves, only when he is in the neighbourhood of Miss 
Betsey or Miss Martha or Miss Maria or a dozen of Misses at 
whom he casts sheep eyes. You said as you passed through Lex- 
ington you saw Miss Salisbury teaching some "young ideas how 
to shoot. ,, I am sure if they were as large as I they would not 
have needed her assistance to teach them how to shoot, especially 
if they shoot with a bow, for generally such ideas learn how to 
shoot with that sort of a weapon by instinct. All the family send 
their love to you, and Mother says again: "Take good care of 
yourself and come home soon." As I am to have this letter 
finished by twelve o'clock and it is only a few minutes of that 
time, I must stop here, not before saying, however, to make 
haste and come home. If you do not start home right off, you 
must write again. 

Yours affectionately 

Mary V. Swaim. 

The resemblances between O. Henry and his mother 
are still further revealed in these "Memories of the 

*This was Dr. J. L. Cole with whom lived his nephew C. C. Cole. The latter, a young 
graduate of Trinity College, N. C, was soon to edit the Times of Greensboro, to which William 
Gilmore Simms, John Esten Cooke, and Mrs. Lydia Huntly Sigourney contributed regularly. 
C. C. Cole became Colonel of the Twenty-second Regiment and was killed in the Battle of 
Chancellorsville, May 3, 1863. 

30 



ANCESTRY 

Mother of a Gifted Writer," sent me by Mr. William 
Laurie Hill: 

In the days of the old four horse stage coach and the up and down 
hill stretch of our country roads leading from one town or village 
to another, there were but fifty miles of road between the old 
Revolutionary village of Milton, North Carolina, and the more 
aspiring town of Greensboro. For a high type of social life old 
Milton, although a village, had no superior in the State, and her 
people, although "stay at home bodies," claimed many friends 
even in distant parts. In summer many of her homes were filled 
with visitors and in those halcyon days of peace and plenty it was 
a delight to keep open house. 

Milton could boast of having a spicy weekly paper known as 
the Milton Chronicle that carried its weekly message into all the 
neighboring counties. The editor was Charles Napoleon Bona- 
part Evans, who originated the character of "Jesse Holmes, the 
Fool-Killer."* This character furnished sarcasm and wit in 
weekly instalments that kept the young people always on the 
edge of expectancy. Greensboro also had a paper of no mean 
pretentions and, perhaps leaving out the Salisbury Watchman 
and the Hillsboro paper long presided over by that venerable old 
editor Dennis Heartt, the Greensboro Patriot stood next in age 
in the State, and the name of William Swaim was almost as widely 
known as was Edward J. Hale of the Fayetteville Observer. There 
seemed to be warm and tender social ties that united the Swaim 
and Evans families and although dwelling fifty miles apart there 

♦Readers of O. Henry will recall that in "The Fool-Killer" he says: "Down South when- 
ever any one perpetrates some particularly monumental piece of foolishness everybody says: 
'Send for Jesse Holmes.' Jesse Holmes is the Fool-Killer." It is interesting to note that O. 
Henry was here quoting, unconsciously I presume, a saying originated by his mother's cousin. 
Charles Napoleon Bonapart Evans's mother was a Miss Shirley, sister of Abia Shirley. The 
familiarity of Greensboro boys with "Jesse Holmes" has here led O. Henry to ascribe a wider 
circuit to the saying than the facts seem to warrant. From queries sent out I am inclined 
to think that "Jesse Holmes" as a synonym for the Fool-Killer is not widely known in the 
South and is current in North Carolina only in spots. " I tried it out this morning in chapel," 
writes President E. K. Graham, of the University of North Carolina, "on perhaps five hundred 
North Carolinians. Only three had heard of it." One of these was from Greensboro and cited 
Charles Napoleon Bonapart Evans as the author, 

31 



O. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 

were frequent interchanges of visits, and Mary Jane Virginia 
Swaim always enjoyed with a relish her visits to Mrs. Evans and 
was the recipient of many hospitable attentions whenever she 
brightened by her presence our little village. 

To have a new girl come into our social life was a source of great 
pleasure to our boys and I well remember the first time I ever saw 
Mary Swaim, and, had I been just a little older, perhaps there 
might have been a serious attempt to alter what is now both 
biography and family history. Calling one evening at the Evans 
home, which was diagonally across the street from my own, I was 
ushered into the presence of one of the most winsome women I 
ever saw, and from our first introduction we became friends. 

Mary Swaim was not a beauty but her eyes could talk and when 
she became animated in conversation her every feature was instinct 
with expression and life and with the passing thoughts to which 
she gave expression. There was a play of color in her cheeks 
richer than the blush of the peach. She was quick of wit and a 
match for any would-be iconoclast who undertook to measure 
repartee with her. She was considerate of even her youngest 
cavalier and never seemed to shun the attentions of those younger 
in years than herself. To say that she was a universal favorite 
in old Milton with young and old, expresses but feebly the im- 
pression that she left on the hearts and memories of those who 
knew her in the happy days of long ago. 

The tides of life ebbing and flowing carried this most winsome 
woman into new and untried paths and she became, as she had 
given promise to be, a lovely and loving mother. After the 
pleasant associations of those early days I saw her no more, but 
I was in the throng that assembled in Raleigh, on December 2, 
1914, and witnessed the unveiling of the bronze tablet* in the 
Library Building, placed there in memory of her illustrious son, 
William Sydney Porter, more familiarly and affectionately known 
as 0. Henry. Is it any wonder that such a woman as Mary Swaim 
should have given to the world such a son as William Sydney 

♦Erected by the Literary and Historical Association of North Carolina under the presi- 
dency of Dr. Archibald Henderson. 

32 



ANCESTRY 

Porter? In him and his wonderful literary work the mother will 
live on when marble monuments and bronze tablets shall have 
crumbled into dust. 

O. Henry's grandparents on his father's side were 
Sidney Porter and Ruth Coffyn Worth. They rest 
side by side in the small and fast diminishing grave- 
yard of the First Presbyterian Church in Greensboro, 
the headstones bearing the inscriptions: 

In Memory In Memory 

of of 

Sidney Porter Ruth C. 

Born in Connecticut Wife of 

Feb. 2, 1790 Sidney Porter 

Died in Greensboro, N. C. Born June 3, 1805 

Feb. 8, 1848 Died Aug. 17, 1890 

"Asleep in Jesus." 

Sidney Porter was a tall, jolly, heavy-set man but 
with little of the force or thrift of the family into which 
he married. He came from Connecticut to North 
Carolina about the year 1823 as the agent of a clock 
company. Several of the clocks that he sold are still 
doing duty in Guilford County and from the firm-name 
upon them, "Eight day repeating brass clock, made 
by C. and N. Jerome, Bristol, Conn.," they would 
seem to indicate that Sidney Porter's home was 
in Bristol. "C. and N. Jerome," writes Judge Epaph- 
roditus Peck, of Bristol, "were the principal clock- 
makers here at that time. They used to send out as 

33 



O. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 

travelling sellers of their clocks young men here; and 
I think that the fact that Sidney Porter was sent 
out by them probably indicates that he was then living 
here. Communities were then isolated and self-centred 
and they were not likely to send men from other towns. 
I do not find any traces of him, however, on the local 
records." 

Dr. David Worth, father of Ruth, made minute 
inquiries into the past of his would-be son-in-law and 
became convinced, writes a descendant, that "Mr. 
Porter was a man of strictly upright character and 
worthy of his daughter's hand." The marriage took 
place at Center, the ancestral home of the Worths, on 
April 22, 1824, and was really a double celebration. 
Ruth Worth's brother Jonathan, who was later to 
become Governor of North Carolina, had married 
Martitia Daniel of Virginia two days before, and the 
brother's infare served as wedding reception for the 
sister. It was a notable occasion for the little Quaker 
village in more ways than mere festivity. Could I 
have been present when the infare was at its height, 
when congratulation and prophecy were bringing their 
blended tributes to father and mother and to son and 
daughter, I should not have been an unwelcome visitor, 
I think, could I have lifted the veil of the future for a 
moment and said to Doctor Worth and his wife: 
" Eighty-three years from now a statue will be dedicated 
34 



ANCESTRY 

in the capital of North Carolina to one of Jonathan's 
grandsons, the first statue to be erected by popular 
subscription to a North Carolina soldier, and the name 
engraved upon it will be that of Worth Bagley; and 
ninety years from to-day a memorial tablet will be 
dedicated in the same city to one of Ruth's grandsons, 
the only monument ever erected in the State to literary 
genius, and the name engraved upon it will be that of 
William Sydney Porter." But the roads of destiny 
along which the two cousins were to travel to their 
memorial meeting-place were to be strangely diverse. 

Sidney Porter, after a few unsuccessful years spent 
in a neighbouring county, came back to Guilford and 
opened a carriage-making and general repair shop in 
Greensboro, where he worked at his trade till his death. 
His shop stood on West Market Street where his 
daughter's school was later to be erected, the only 
school that O. Henry ever attended. Sidney Porter 
was liked for his genial qualities by his neighbours but 
his business did not prosper. In 1841 he was com- 
pelled to mortgage to James Sloan, "trustee for the 
benefit of John A. Mebane and others," all that he had 
even to his working tools except those "allowed to be 
retained by debtors who are workmen." That the 
mortgage was not foreclosed was probably due to the 
standing and aid of his wife's family and especially to 
his wife's superior thrift and efficiency. It is probable 

35 



O. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 

also that slave labour was a handicap not sufficiently 
taken into account by one whose training had been in 
a community unaccustomed to the peculiar conditions 
that confronted the white labourer in the South. 

That O. Henry's grandfather was considered a man 
of at least more than ordinary directive ability, in spite 
of his habit of frequent tippling which is still remem- 
bered, appears from a public record of 1837. The little 
town, whose corporate limits had just been made one 
mile square, appointed groups of men to keep the 
streets in order. Four supervisors, representing the 
four quarters of the town, were chosen to have control 
of the new work. The position was one of responsi- 
bility and was given only to men of known enterprise, 
as is shown by the character of the appointees. James 
Sloan, one of the foremost citizens of the town and 
later to be Chief Quartermaster of the State during 
the war, was supervisor of the first division; Sidney 
Porter, of the second; Henry Humphreys, the richest 
man in Greensboro, the owner of the Mount Hecla 
Steam Cotton Mill, and the first to prove that cotton 
could be profitably manufactured in the State, of the 
third; and Reuben Dick, pioneer manufacturer of cigars, 
of the fourth. 

Sidney Porter's most characteristic trait, however, 
the quality that he was to transmit to his grandson, was 
not business efficiency. It was his sunny good humour. 
36 



ANCESTRY 

"He joked and laughed at his work," says an old citi- 
zen,* "and was especially beloved by children. He 
would repair their toys for them free of charge and 
seemed never so happy as when they gathered about 
him on the street or in his workshop. He even let 
them tamper with his tools." Fifty years later they 
were to say of 0. Henry in Texas :f " He was a favourite 
with the children. Those that have grown up have 
pleasant memories of a jolly, big-hearted man who 
never failed to throw himself unreservedly into their 
games, to tell them stories that outrivalled in interest 
those of Uncle Remus, to sing delightfully humorous 
songs to the merry jangle of a guitar, or to draw mirth- 
provoking cartoons." 

The memory of Sidney Porter that survives is clear, 
therefore, in outline, though faint in content. From 
him O. Henry got also the wanderlust that urged him 
unceasingly from place to place. Clocks were never 
as interesting to Grandpa Porter as were the faces and 
places that he saw on his frequent tours. From Hart- 
ford County, Connecticut, to Guilford County, North 
Carolina, from Guilford to Randolph, from Randolph 
back to Guilford, Sidney Porter's shifts brought him 
a widened fellowship but neither prosperity nor geo- 
graphical contentment. He handed down his name 



* David Scott. 

tSee "O Henry's Texas Days," by Hyder E. Rollinsjdn the Bookman, New York, October, 
1914). 

37 



O. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 

and a goodly share of his disposition to his grandson 
and, as the original rolling stone, might well typify 
if he did not suggest the title of the first and only 
periodical that O. Henry was to edit. 

Ruth Worth, wife of Sidney Porter and grandmother 
of 0. Henry, was what is known in North Carolina 
parlance as "a character," the term implying marked 
individuality and will power. Her parents were Quak- 
ers of honourable ancestry and of distinguished ser- 
vice. David Worth, the father, was a descendant of 
John Worth who emigrated from England, during 
Cromwell's reign, and settled in Massachusetts. David 
Worth became a physician, was active in the Manu- 
mission Society of North Carolina, and represented 
Guilford County in the legislature from 1822 to 1823. 
Through him 0. Henry was eighth in lineal descent 
from Peter Folger, Benjamin Franklin's grandfather. 
Eunice Gardner, whom David Worth married in 1798, 
was born in North Carolina, though her parents came 
from Nantucket. On the death of her husband she 
began the practice of medicine, in which she attained 
notable success. The best-known member of the 
family was Ruth Worth's brother Jonathan, who was 
Governor of North Carolina from 1865 to 1868 and 
whom the Chronicle, of Charleston, South Carolina, de- 
scribed as "a quiet little old gentleman, sharp as a briar, 
and with a well of wisdom at the root of every gray hair." 
38 



ANCESTRY 

The description fits Ruth Worth though it omits 
her native kindness of heart. I have found no memorial 
tribute to this grandmother of 0. Henry that does not 
emphasize her loyalty to her convictions, her practical 
efficiency, her self-reliance, and her goodness of heart. 
"So genuine was her kindness of heart and sympathy 
for suffering," says Church Society, "that the surest 
passports to her ministry were sickness, poverty, and 
want, and long will she be remembered." Says an- 
other local paper: "She was perhaps the best known 
and most useful, self-sacrificing woman of her day. A 
history of her eventful life cannot be given in a few 
words but it would require a volume to do justice to 
her honoured career." Six years after her death Mr. 
J. R. Bulla, in his "Reminiscences of Randolph County," 
compared her with Pocahontas, Lady Arabella, Flora 
McDonald, Queen Margaret, and Queen Elizabeth, 
all of whom were hopelessly and pathetically outclassed. 
"If Queen Elizabeth," he concludes, "had had as 
much wisdom as Ruth Porter, her reign would not only 
be extolled by the English but by all the civilized world. 
No Queen that Britain has ever had, had the eighth 
part of the common sense of Ruth Porter." 

Left a widow at the age of forty -three with seven 
children and a mortgaged home she set to work first 
with her needle and then with a few boarders to earn a 
support for herself and those dependent on her. To 



0. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 

these were later added Shirley Worth Porter, William 
Sydney Porter [0. Henry], and David Weir Porter, 
the motherless children of her son, Dr. Algernon 
Sidney Porter. David Weir died in early childhood 
but 0. Henry lived with his grandmother, his father, 
his aunt, "Miss Lina," and his brother Shirley till 
1882 when he moved to Texas Finding neither her 
needle nor her table sufficiently remunerative Mrs. 
Porter studied medicine and drugs under her son and 
became, as her mother had become before her, a prac- 
titioner in many homes. 

She also collected or tried to collect the bills due 
her son. It was not good form in those days for a 
physician to dun a patient or even to send in a state- 
ment of the amount due. The patient was supposed 
to settle once a year without a reminder. This did 
not accord with Mrs. Porter's ways of doing business 
and she used to make out the bills and send them. 
In return she often received very sharp replies. Doctor 
Porter had on one occasion visited two maiden ladies 
and when the bill was sent to their father he replied 
indignantly that Doctor Porter's visits were only "social 
calls." "Social calls!" wrote O. Henry's grandmother, 
"I want you to understand that my son Algernon don't 
make social calls on maiden ladies at two o'clock in 
the morning and they a-suffering with cramp colic." 
The bill was paid. 
40 



ANCESTRY 

Her son's practice declined steadily, however, and 
the household was often in sore straits. Mrs. Porter's 
rather intermittent calls, Miss Lina's little school, and 
O. Henry's meagre salary as clerk in his uncle Clark 
Porter's drug store were practically the only means of 
family support during the latter years of 0. Henry's 
life in his native State. One cannot but feel a keen 
regret that neither the grandmother, nor the father, 
nor the aunt lived to witness or even to fore-glimpse the 
fame of the youngest member of the Porter household. 
Indeed the chief trait which Mrs. Sidney Porter saw 
in her grandson was his constitutional shyness. "I 
sometimes regret," she remarked, "that we did not 
send him to Trinity College, for Dr. Braxton Craven 
makes every student feel that he, Braxton Craven, is 
the greatest man on earth and the student himself 
the next greatest." An education away from home, 
however, could never have been seriously considered. 
"I would have given my eyes for a college education," 
O. Henry said, when his daughter Margaret brought 
home her college diploma. 

O. Henry's father, Dr. Algernon Sidney Porter, 
was the oldest of the seven children. He was born in 
1825 and died in 1888. If O. Henry received from his 
mother his gift of repartee, his artistic temperament, 
and a certain instinctive shyness, he received from his 
father his sympathy with all sorts and conditions of 

41 



O. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 

men, his over-flowing generosity, his utter indifference 
to caste, in a word a large share of his characteristic 
and ineradicable democracy. To the same source 
may also be ascribed, through association at least, 
some of O. Henry's constructive ingenuity. 

Doctor Porter was for several years the best-known 
and the best-loved physician in Guilford County. An 
old friend* of his, to whom the memory of Doctor Porter 
brought tears, said recently: "He was the best-hearted 
man I ever knew; honest, high-toned, and generous. 
Rain or shine, sick or well, he would visit the poorest 
family in the county. He would have been a rich 
man if he had collected a half of what was due him. 
His iron-gray hair and the shape of his head reminded 
you of Zeb Vance." His office, like his father's before 
him, became a sort of general repair shop, though in a 
different way. "I shall never forget," said the late 
Joe Reece, editor of the Daily Record of Greensboro, 
"something that happened in my boyhood. A giant 
of a negro had been cut down the back in a street fight. 
He passed me making straight for Doctor Porter's 
office, and yelling like a steam piano. Everybody in 
those days when they got hurt made for Doctor Por- 
ter's office as straight as a June shad in fly -time. When 
I got to the little office, I'll be john-squizzled if Alg. 
Porter didn't have that darky down on the floor. 

♦David Scott. 

42 



ANCESTRY 

He was sitting on him and sewing him up and lecturing 
to him about the evils of intemperance all at the same 
time. He lectured sort o' unsteadily on that theme 
but nobody could beat his sewing." 

A few of the older citizens kept Doctor Porter as 
their physician to the last in spite of his lessening 
interest in the practice of medicine. "I never knew his 
equal," said one.* "You got better as soon as he 
entered the room. He was the soul of humour and 
geniality and resourcefulness and all my children were 
devoted to him." 

My own memory of Doctor Porter is of a small man 
with a huge head and a long beard; quiet, gentle, soft- 
voiced, self-effacing, who looked at you as if from 
another world and who walked with a step so noise- 
less, so absolutely echo-less, as to attract attention. 
This characteristic was also inherited by O. Henry 
who always seemed to me to be treading on down. 
They used to say of Doctor Porter that he had a far 
more scientific knowledge of medicine and drugs than 
any other physician in the community. He had studied 
under Dr. David P. Weir, in whose drug store he 
had clerked, and for a time he lectured on chemistry 
at the Edgeworth Female Seminary, of which Doctor 
Weir was principal from 1844 to 1845. 

Doctor Porter's interests, however, became more and 



♦Mrs. Robert P. Dick. 

43 



O. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 

more absorbed in fruitless inventions and remained 
less and less with the problems or with the actual 
practice of medicine. A perpetual motion water- 
wheel, a new-fangled churn, a washing machine, a 
flying machine, a horseless carriage to be run by steam, 
and a cotton-picking contrivance that was to take the 
place of negro labour became obsessions with him. In 
the winter time his room would be littered with wooden 
wheels and things piled under the bed, but in the sum- 
mer time he moved or was moved out to the barn. 
In one of his last interviews O. Henry said that he 
often found himself recalling the days when as a boy 
he used to lie prone and dreaming on the old barn 
floor while his father worked quietly and assiduously 
on his perpetual motion water-wheel. "He was so 
absent-minded," 0. Henry said, "that he would 
frequently start out without his hat and we would be 
sent to carry it to him." A schoolmate* of 0. Henry 
writes of those days : 

Will [0. Henry] was a great lover of fun and mischief. When 
we were quite small his father, Dr. A. S. Porter, fell a victim to 
the delusion that he had solved the problem of perpetual motion, 
and finally abandoned a splendid practice and spent nearly all 
his time working on his machines. His mother, who was a most 
practical and sensible old woman, made him betake himself and 
his machines to the barn, and these Will and I, always being careful 
to wait for a time when the doctor was out, would proceed to 
demolish, destroying often in a few minutes that which it had 

*JohnH. Dillard, of Murphy, N. C. 

44 



ANCESTRY 

taken much time and labor to construct. While, of course, I 
do not know the fact, I strongly suspect that the doctor's mother 
inspired these outrages. 

Scientists distinguish three kinds of inheritance. 
In the case of "blended" inheritance, the child, like 
a folk-song, bears the marks of composite authorship ; 
in "prepotent" inheritance, one parent or remoter 
ancestor is supposed to be most effective in stamping 
the offspring; and in "exclusive" inheritance, the 
character of the descendant is definitely that of one 
ancestor. Though the classification rests on no well- 
established basis and illustrates the use of three obedi- 
ent adjectives rather than the operation of ascertained 
laws, it is at least convenient and may serve pro tern 
till a wiser survey replaces it. It is easy to see that 
O. Henry was the beneficiary not of an exclusive but 
of a blended inheritance. "This is a country," he 
reminds us, "of mix-ups." But the mother strain, if 
not prepotent in the sense of science, seems to me to 
have outweighed that of any other relative of whom 
we have record. 



45 



CHAPTER FOUR 

BIRTHPLACE AND EARLY YEARS 

O. HENRY once wrote from New York: 

I was born and raised in "No'th Ca'llina" and at eighteen went 
to Texas and ran wild on the prairies. Wild yet, but not so wild. 
Can't get to loving New Yorkers. Live all alone in a great big 
two rooms on quiet old Irving Place three doors from Wash. 
Irving's old home. Kind of lonesome. Was thinking lately 
(since the April moon commenced to shine) how I'd like to be down 
South, where I could happen over to Miss Ethel's or Miss Sallie's 
and sit down on the porch — not on a chair — on the edge of the 
porch, and lay my straw hat on the steps and lay my head back 
against the honeysuckle on the post — and just talk. And Miss 
Ethel would go in directly (they say "presently" up here) and 
bring out the guitar. She would complain that the E string was 
broken, but no one would believe her; and pretty soon all of us 
would be singing the "Swanee River" and "In the Evening by 
the Moonlight" and — oh, gol darn it, what's the use of wishing? 

These words, in which 0. Henry almost succeeds in 
expressing the inexpressible, are cited by Miss Mar- 
guerite Campion in Harper's Weekly* as an example 
of "charm." "For charm," she says, "is three parts 
softness. Did not O. Henry, almost more than any 
other American writer, possess it, and was he not, 
until th e day of his death, the soft-hearted advocate 

♦For November 27, 1915. 

46 



BIRTHPLACE AND EARLY YEARS 

of humanity, the friend-of-all-the-world, after the 
only original model of Kim, the vagabond? Charm 
flowed from him through his peculiarly personal pen 
into all that he wrote.'' 

The passage is reproduced here not to illustrate 
charm — though every word is instinct with it — but as 
an example of 0. Henry's ingrained affection for the 
place of his birth. A boy's life in a small Southern 
town immediately after the war, one phase of that life 
at least, was never better portrayed than these lines 
portray it, and whatever facts or events may be added 
in this chapter may best be interpreted against the 
background of the April moon, the porch, the honey- 
suckle, and the guitar with the broken E string. A 
few years later 0. Henry said, of the novel that he 
hoped to write: "The 'hero' of the story will be a man 
born and 'raised' in a somnolent little Southern town. 
His education is about a common school one, but he 
learns afterward from reading and life." 

It is of this little town and of the formative influences 
that passed from it into 0. Henry that we purpose 
in this chapter to write. Had William Sydney Porter 
not been reared in "a somnolent little Southern town" 
he would hardly have developed into the O. Henry 
that we know to-day. He was all his life a dreamer, 
and if the "City of Flowers" had already become the 
"Gate City" during his boyhood, if the wooded slopes 

47 



O. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 

had already been covered with the roaring cotton 
mills, the dreamer whose dreams were to become litera- 
ture would hardly have found in the place of his birth 
either the time or the clime in which to develop his 
dream faculties. The somnolent little Southern town, 
moreover, which he would have sketched if he had 
lived to write his literary autobiography, deserves 
more than a mere mention. Not only was it the place 
that nurtured him and his forebears, that released his 
constructive powers, that held a place in his dreams 
to the end; it had also an individuality of its own and 
a history not without dignity and distinction. 

Greensboro took its name from General Nathanael 
Greene, of Rhode Island. Five miles northwest of the 
town, on March 15, 1781, the great Rhode Islander 
fought his greatest battle, that of Guilford Court 
House. The fact that the battle was not incontest- 
ably a victory for either Greene or Cornwallis has, by 
multiplying discussion, been an advantage in keeping 
alive the memory of the conflict and of the issues in- 
volved. The boys and girls of Greensboro know more 
about the battle and about the traditions that still 
hover around the field than they would have known 
if either Greene or Cornwallis had been decisively and 
undebatably defeated. Mark Twain says that every 
American is born with the date 1492 engraved on his 
brain. The children of Guilford County are born 
48 



BIRTHPLACE AND EARLY YEARS 

with March 15, 1781, similarly impressed. Since the 
publication, however, of Schenck's "Memorial Volume 
of the Guilford Battle Ground Company," in 1893, 
historians have begun to recognize that in any fair 
perspective the battle of Guilford Court House must 
rank as a turning point in the Revolutionary War. 
Ultimate victory was assured and would have come to 
the patriot arms without the contribution of this battle, 
but it would not have come at Yorktown seven months 
and four days later. A participant in the battle wrote 
immediately afterward :* 

The enemy were so beaten that we should have disputed the 
victory could we have saved our artillery, but the General thought 
that it was a necessary sacrifice. The spirits of the soldiers would 
have been affected if the cannon had been sent off the field, and 
in this woody country cannon cannot always be sent off at a 
critical moment. 

The General, by his abilities and good conduct and by his 
activity and bravery in the field, has gained the confidence and 
respect of the army and the country to an amazing degree. You 
would, from the countenances of our men, believe they had been 
decidedly victorious. They are in the highest spirits, and appear 
most ardently to wish to engage the enemy again. The enemy 
are much embarrassed by their wounded. When we consider 
the nakedness of our troops and of course their want of discipline, 
their numbers, and the loose, irregular manner in which we came 
into the field, I think we have done wonders. I rejoice at our 
success, and were our exertions and sacrifices published to the 
world as some commanding officers would have published them, 
we should have received more applause than our modesty claims. 



♦The letter was published in the New Jersey State Gazette of April 11, 1781. 

49 



O. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 

When the battle was fought there was of course no 
Greensboro. The county seat of Guilford was Martins- 
ville, where the court house was, where the battle took 
place, and where the court records of November 21, 
1787, remind us that "Andrew Jackson produced a 
license from the judges of the Superior Court of Law 
and Equity to practise law and was admitted as an 
attorney of this court." But twenty-eight years after 
the battle the court records read: "Court adjourned 
from the town of Martinsville to the town of Greens- 
boro, the centre of the county, to meet at 10 o'clock to- 
morrow, Friday, 19 May, 1809. . . . According to 
adjournment the court met Friday, 19 May, at Greens- 
boro, for the first time." This procedure marked the 
death of Martinsville and the birth of Greensboro. 
But the historic old court house at Martinsville was to 
render a patriotic service that its builders could never 
have anticipated. Some of the great oak logs of which 
it was built, long seasoned and carefully hewn, were 
sold year by year to the builders of new homes in the 
new county seat. Some of them were sawed up into 
weather-boarding while others were only shortened 
or placed just as they were in the new buildings. These 
scarred memorials of Revolutionary days may not 
have meant much to the generation that utilized them, 
but to the younger generation of another age they were 
as full of historic romance as the Spanish ships that 
50 



BIRTHPLACE AND EARLY YEARS 

young Longfellow used to gaze at in the wharves of 
his native Portland. One of these logs formed a part 
of the Porter home, which was built of logs weather- 
boarded over, and 0. Henry used to exhibit with boyish 
pride a treasured Indian arrow-head which he had 
found sticking in it. 

Guilford Battle Ground is now covered with stately 
memorials, more than thirty monuments or shafts tes- 
tifying to the pride that North Carolina and Virginia 
and Maryland and Delaware and the national Govern- 
ment itself feel in the service rendered by the men who 
fell or fought on this field. In addition to the great 
monument to Nathanael Greene there is a monument 
to "No North, No South." There is another to the 
"Hon. Lieut. Colonel Stuart, of the 2nd Battalion of 
the Queen's Guards"; it was erected on the spot where 
he fell "by the Guilford Battle Ground Company in 
honour of a brave foeman." But during O. Henry's 
boyhood and till he left Greensboro no organized at- 
tempt had been made to redeem the field from its 
century of neglect. It was only an expanse of red 
soil and woodland, but an expanse that by its very 
bareness stimulated the constructive imagination. 

There was no part of the ground that O. Henry did 
not know. Bullets, buttons, pieces of swords or shells 
or flint-locks could be picked up after an hour's search. 
The visitor to the battlefield does not now lose himself 

51 



0. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 

in a reverie; he reads history as recorded and inter- 
preted for him on monument and slab, on boulder and 
arch. But in the 'seventies the field had to be recon- 
structed in imagination, the contestants visualized, 
the lines of battle regrouped, the sound of gun and 
drum made audible again, the charge and counter- 
charge reenacted. If the field is history now, it 
was the stuff that dreams are made of then, and to 
no one was its appeal stronger or more fertile in storied 
suggestion than to 0. Henry. "I have never known 
any one who read history with such avidity," said Mrs. 
R. M. Hall, in whose home on the Texas ranch 0. Henry 
lived. "He not only devoured Hume, Macaulay, 
Green, and Guizot, but made their scenes and char- 
acters live again in vivid conversation." 

But though General Greene gave Greensboro its 
name, the real founder of the town was an old-field 
school teacher, one of those rare characters who, un- 
known to history, seem endowed with the power to 
vitalize every forward-looking agency of their times 
and to touch constructively every personality that 
comes within the orbit of their influence. The year 
1824, which witnessed the marriage of Sidney Porter 
and Ruth Worth, O.Henry's grandparents, witnessed the 
death at the age of one hundred years of David Caldwell, 
the man who, more than any other, made Guilford 
County and Greensboro known beyond State lines. 
52 



BIRTHPLACE AND EARLY YEARS 

It has been already said that when the battle of 
Guilford Court House was fought there was no Greens- 
boro. There was, however, the triangle in which 
Greensboro was to be placed, a triangle formed by 
David Caldwell's log schoolhouse and his two Presby- 
terian churches, Alamance and Buffalo. The school- 
house, which was also his home, stood on the road be- 
tween Guilford Court House and what was to be Greens- 
boro. To it came students from every Southern State 
and from it went five governors, more than fifty min- 
isters, and an uncounted number of teachers and 
trained citizens. David Caldwell was a Scotch-Irishman 
from Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, a graduate of 
Princeton, a teacher, preacher, carpenter, farmer, 
doctor, and patriot. 

David Caldwell had espoused the cause of the Revo- 
lution ten years before the storm broke and from his 
schoolroom and pulpit had prepared his countrymen 
for the issue which he plainly foresaw. He had reasoned 
with Tryon and Cornwallis and had given valuable 
counsel to Greene. Though a price had been set upon 
his head he was with his two congregations when they 
faced the British at Alamance and Guilford Court House. 
The greatest personal loss that had come to him was in 
the wanton burning of his books, letters, and private 
papers. Armful after armful of these memorials of an 
heroic past were dumped by Cornwallis's troopers into 

53 



O. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 

the flaming oven in the doctor's backyard. Though his 
books were his tools, he was often heard to say that he 
regretted most of all the loss of his private papers which 
constituted a sort of first-hand history of the times. 
Had t hese been preserved Doctor Caldwell's name would 
probably appear in every record of the original sources of 
colonial and Revolutionary history, while now it appears 
in none. 

His life was written eighteen years after his death 
by Dr. Eli W. Caruthers, and he appears as one of 
the characters in at least two historical novels, "Ala- 
mance; or, the Great and Final Experiment," written 
by Dr. Calvin H. Wiley, in 1847, and "The Master 
of the Red Buck and the Bay Doe," a recent work by 
Mr. William Laurie Hill. Doctor Wiley's book is 
mentioned by Mr. William Dean Howells as having 
"bewitched" him in his boyhood:* 



At nine years of age he [Mr. Howells] read the history of Greece, 
and the history of Rome, and he knew that Goldsmith wrote them. 
One night his father told the boys all about Don Quixote; and a 
little while after he gave my boy the book. He read it over and 
over again; but he did not suppose it was a novel. It was his 
elder brother who read novels, and a novel was like "Handy 
Andy," or "Harry Lorrequer," or the "Bride of Lammerinoor." 
His brother had another novel which they preferred to either; 
it was in Harper's old "Library of Select Novels," and was called 
"Alamance; or, the Great and Final Experiment," and it was about 
the life of some sort of community in North Carolina. It be- 



*See "A Boy's Town," pages 21-22. 

54 



BIRTHPLACE AND EARLY YEARS 

witched them, and though my boy could not afterward recall a 
single fact or figure in it, he could bring before his mind's eye every 
trait of its outward aspect. 

But David Caldwell lives most securely not in books 
but in the men that he made and in the widening com- 
pass of their influence. The Guilford County of his 
day was peculiarly cosmopolitan and even international 
in its make-up. There were the Scotch-Irish in and 
around Greensboro, then as now the masterful stock; 
there were the German exiles from the Palatinate in 
the eastern part of the county; and there were the 
English Quakers, who came via Xantucket, and a 
little band of Welshmen to the west and south. Out 
of the clash or coincidence of these varied racial stocks 
the history of the county was builded. But all ele- 
ments went to school to David Caldwell or to teachers 
trained by him. 

The Worth and Porter families form no exception. 
Jonathan Worth, Quaker and future governor, came 
from Center to Greensboro to be taught and to teach 
in the Greensboro Academy, a Presbyterian school 
taught by a pupil and son of David Caldwell. In 
1821 "the trustees of the Academy think it necessary 
to announce to the public that they have employed 
Mr. Jonathan Worth as an assistant teacher. Xo 
young gentleman, we believe, sustains a fairer char- 
acter than Mr. Worth.' ' When Jonathan Worth began 

55 



O. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 

the study of law it was under Archibald D. Murphey, 
another graduate of David Caldwell's log school. For 
fifty years after his death the educational currents 
flowing through the county can be traced back to a 
common source in David Caldwell. 

But the channel through which he was chiefly to 
exert an influence upon the Porter family was Governor 
John Motley Morehead, the founder of Edge worth 
Female Seminary. Edgeworth, as we have seen, 
played an important role in the lives of O. Henry's 
parents, but after the buildings were burned the 
spacious lawn was to serve in a peculiar way as play- 
ground and dreamland for the son. Mr. Morehead 
attended David Caldwell's school when the old dominie 
had passed his ninetieth year but when his ability as a 
teacher and his range of vision as a citizen seemed to 
have suffered no diminution. Governor Morehead 
was an admirer and close reader of the novels of Maria 
Edgeworth and of her earlier "Essays on Practical 
Education," written in collaboration with her father. 

Miss Edgeworth 's favourite contrast between the 
social careers of young women who had been sanely 
educated at home and those who had not, her constant 
balancing of the simple affections against false senti- 
ment and sentimentality, her pitting of the "dasher" 
and "title-hunter" against modesty and native worth 
appealed strongly to a man who had five daughters to 
56 




9 

fi 



r Ssaas 

r 

i 



SEES? ' |C r~ r v« -*f : 9*?KS 




BIRTHPLACE AND EARLY YEARS 

be educated but who could find no girls' school that 
met the Maria Edgeworth requirements. He founded, 
therefore, a school between his own residence, Bland- 
wood, and the Porter home, which he called the Edge- 
worth Female Seminary. It was the only advanced 
school for women in North Carolina that was founded, 
owned, and financed not by a board or a church but by 
an individual. Teachers were brought from France 
and Germany, the grounds were beautifully kept, new 
buildings were added, and till the beginning of the war 
Edgeworth enjoyed a growing and generous patronage 
from the South and West. 

The war converted Edgeworth into a hospital for 
both Confederate and Federal soldiers. As the build- 
ings were almost opposite the Porter home, O. Henry's 
father was kept busy in the practice of his profession. 
The old Presbyterian Church, which O. Henry's grand- 
mother attended, had also to do hospital duty by turns, 
and thus father and grandmother were not only in 
constant demand but were laying up a store of interest- 
ing reminiscence that was to become a part of 0. Henry's 
heritage in later years. The war took its toll of Greens- 
boro citizens though there was little destruction of 
property. The town and county and State had been 
overwhelmingly for union and against secession, but 
when the order came to North Carolina to send troops 
with which to fight her seceding neighbours, all parties 

57 



O. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 

were united in opposition. The contest then became, 
as O. Henry puts it,* "the rebellion of the abolitionists 
against the secessionists." No battle was fought in 
Guilford County, but Greensboro loomed into sudden 
prominence at the close of the war and again a few 
years after the close. 

Jefferson Davis was in Danville, Virginia, fifty 
miles from Greensboro, when he heard on April 9, 1865, 
that General Lee had surrendered. He came immedi- 
ately to Greensboro where the last conference was 
held. The members of his cabinet were with him and 
he was met in Greensboro by General Joseph E. John- 
ston and General Beauregard. It was perhaps the 
saddest moment of Mr. Davis's life. Hope was gone, 
but his instinctive thoughtfulness for others did not 
desert him. Knowing that the home that should 
shelter him might be burned the next day by Federal 
troops he declined all offers of hospitality and remained 
in the old-fashioned cars that had brought him from 
Virginia. He was still for fight but consented reluc- 
tantly that General Johnston should open correspond- 
ence with General Sherman. A little later thirty 
thousand of Sherman's troops entered the town under 
General J. D. Cox and soon thirty-seven thousand 
Confederates under General Johnston were paroled. 
Greensboro looked like a tiny islet in a sea of mingled 

• In "Buried Treasure." 

58 



BIRTHPLACE AND EARLY YEARS 

blue and gray. The boys of the town gathered up 
eagerly and wonderingly the old muskets and swords 
thrown away by the Confederates and built stories 
about them or fought mimic battles with them long 
after the hands that had once held them were dust. 
There was little disorder, for all knew that the end had 
come and the soldiers were busy fraternizing. Rec- 
onciliation, however, was harder to Confederate wives 
and mothers than to Confederate soldiers. Mrs. 
Letitia Walker, a daughter of Governor Morehead, 
describes the scene as follows: 



President and Mrs. Davis remained over one night in Greensboro 
in their car, declining the invitation of my father, for fear the 
Federal troops should burn the house that sheltered him for one 
night. Memminger and his wife remained over several days with 
us for a rest, bringing with them Vice-President Alexander H. 
Stephens, so pale and careworn; but the price was on his head, 
and we tearfully bade him Godspeed. Never can I forget the 
farewell scene when the brave and grand Joseph E. Johnston called 
to say farewell, with tears running down his brown cheeks. Not 
a word was spoken, but silent prayers went up for his preservation. 

. . But one fine morning, amid the sound of bugles and trumpets 
and bands of music, the Federals entered Greensboro, fully thirty 
thousand strong, to occupy the town for some time. General 
Cox was in command. He, Burnside, Schofield, and Kilpatrick, 
with their staffs, sent word to the mayor that they would occupy 
the largest house in town that night, and until their headquarters 
were established. They came to Blandwood, which already 
sheltered three families and several sick soldiers. My father 
received them courteously and received them as guests — an act 
which General Cox appreciated, and after placing his tent in the 

59 



O. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 

rear of Judge Robert P. Dick's house, he rode up every afternoon 
to consult with the Honourable John A. Gilmer and my father 
on the conditions of the country. He was a most courteous and 
elegant man, and in many ways displayed his sympathy with us. 
. . . Very soon a note was received announcing the arrival of Mrs 
Cox and the hope that Mrs. Gilmer and Mrs. Walker would do 
him the honour to call upon his wife. . . . She received us in 
Mrs. Dick's parlor, simple in manner, dignified, bordering on stiff- 
ness — in contrast with the genial manners of her husband. . . . 
A grand review of all the troops was to be held on the next Saturday, 
and a pavil on was built in the centre of town — upper seats to 
be occupied by the Federal ladies. By nine o'clock a four-horse 
ambulance with outriders was sent with a note from General Cox 
again "begging the honour of Mrs. Gilmer's and Mrs. Walker's 
company, with Mrs. Cox to witness the review." Mrs. Gilmer 
told her husband that she refused to add one more spectator to 
the pageant, for it was an enemy's bullet that had maimed her 
only son for life. Violent, decisive words, and very ugly ones, 
too, were spoken by the other lady; but a peremptory order was 
given, and with bitter tears, accompanied by one of our soldiers, 
she went to the pavilion, to be received so graciously by Mrs. Cox. 



Three months later there came to Greensboro a 
man who was to give its Reconstruction history a unique 
interest and whose departure after a sojourn of thirteen 
years was to be promptly chronicled by an O. Henry 
cartoon. Albion Winegar Tourgee, author of "The 
Fool's Errand, by One of the Fools," was the first 
carpet-bagger to enter the "somnolent little Southern 
town" on the heels of the receding armies. But the 
town was anything but somnolent during his stay. 
"He was a bold, outspoken, independent kind of 
60 




JUDGE TOURGEE LEAVING GREENSBORO 



BIRTHPLACE AND EARLY YEARS 

man," writes a Confederate soldier of Greensboro who 
knew him well and opposed his every move. "He 
did not toady to the better class of citizens but pursued 
the even tenor of his way, seemingly regardless of public 
opinion. He had a good mind and exercised it. He 
was masterful and would be dominating. He was not 
popular with the other carpet-baggers nor with the 
prominent native scalawags — which speaks much for 
his honesty and independence." By the votes of re- 
cently enfranchised slaves he was made a judge, an 
able, fearless, and personally honest one. But he was 
always an alien, an unwelcome intrusion, a resented 
imposition, "a frog in your chamber, a fly in your 
ointment, a mote in your eye, a triumph to your enemy, 
an apology to your friends, the one thing not needful, 
the hail in harvest, the ounce of sour in a pound of 
sweet." O. Henry found a silver lining in his presence 
but Governor Worth succeeded at last in having a more 
acceptable judge appointed in his place. 

"The Fool's Errand" finds few readers to-day but 
when it appeared, in 1879, it took the country by 
storm. "There can be no doubt," said the Boston 
Traveller of this Greensboro story, "that 'A Fool's 
Errand' will take a high rank in fiction — a rank like 
that of 'Uncle Tom's Cabin.'" The Chicago Herald 
thought that the author must be Mrs. Stowe. "It 
may be well to inquire," said the Concord Monitor, 

61 



0. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 

of New Hampshire, "in view of the power here dis- 
played, whether the long-looked-for native American 
novelist who is to rival Dickens, and equal Thackeray, 
and yet imitate neither, has not been found." "The 
book will rank," said the Portland Advertiser, of Maine, 
"among the famous novels which represent certain 
epochs of history so faithfully and accurately that, 
once written, they must be read by everybody who 
desires to be well informed." 

The story takes place in Greensboro, which is called 
"Verdenton"; Judge Tourgee, "the fool," is "Colonel 
Servosse"; and most of the other characters are Greens- 
boro men easily recognized. It is certainly a note- 
worthy fact that "John Burleson," a citizen of Greens- 
boro and the hero in "A Fool's Errand," has recently 
reappeared as "Stephen Hoyle," the villain, in "The 
Traitor," the novel which Mr. Thomas Dixon has 
wrought into the vast and stirring historic drama called 
"The Birth of a Nation." Neither author attempts 
an accurate appraisal of the character or career of 
"John Burleson" alias "Stephen Hoyle," both inter- 
preting him only as the rock on which the Ku Klux 
Klan was wrecked. 

Judge Tourgee had lain awake many a night in 
Greensboro expecting a visit from "The Invisible 
Empire," but it had not come. In place of it there 
came the conviction, which gives form and substance 
62 



BIRTHPLACE AND EARLY YEARS 

to his book, that Reconstruction so-called was folly 
and he a consummate and pluperfect fool to have 
aided and abetted it. After reading many special 
treatises and university dissertations on the kind of 
Reconstruction attempted in the South I find in "The 
Fool's Errand" the wisest statement of the whole 
question yet made. Nearly a half century has passed 
since the events recorded, but in rereading "A Fool's 
Errand" one feels anew the utter un-Americanism of 
the whole scheme known as Reconstruction and the 
Americanism of the author's conclusions. He presents 
the Greensboro or Southern side as follows: 

We were rebels in arms: we surrendered, and by the terms of 
surrender were promised immunity so long as we obeyed the laws. 
This meant that we should govern ourselves as of old. Instead 
of this, they put military officers over us; they imposed disabilities 
on our best and bravest; they liberated our slaves, and gave them 
power over us. Men born at the North came among us, and 
were given place and power by the votes of slaves and renegades. 
There were incompetent officers. The revenues of the State were 
squandered. We were taxed to educate the blacks. Enormous 
debts were contracted. We did not do these acts of violence 
from political motives, but only because the parties had made 
themselves obnoxious. 

Of the Southern (or shall we call it the American?) 
resistance to Reconstruction, the author says : 

It was a magnificent sentiment that underlay it all — an unfal- 
tering determination, an invincible defiance to all that had the 

63 



O. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 

seeming of compulsion or tyranny. One cannot but regard with 
pride and sympathy the indomitable men, who, being conquered 
in war, yet resisted every effort of the conqueror to change their 
laws, their customs, or even the personnel of their ruling class; 
and this, too, not only with unyielding stubbornness, but with 
success. One cannot but admire the arrogant boldness with 
which they charged the nation which had overpowered them — 
even in the teeth of her legislators — with perfidy, malice, and a 
spirit of unworthy and contemptible revenge. 

Of the Ku Klux Klan more particularly he writes : 

It is sometimes said, by those who do not comprehend its 
purpose, to have been a base, cowardly, and cruel barbarism. 
"What!" says the Northern man — who has stood aloof from 
it all, and with Pharisaic assumption, or comfortable ignorance of 
facts, denounced "Ku-Klux," "carpet-baggers," "scalawags," 
and "niggers" alike, — "was it a brave thing, worthy of a brave and 
chivalric people, to assail poor, weak, defenceless men and women 
with overwhelming forces, to terrify, maltreat, and murder? Is 
this brave and commendable?" 

Ah, my friend! you quite mistake. If that were all that was 
intended and done, no, it was not brave and commendable. But 
it was not alone the poor colored man whom the daring band of 
night-riders struck, as the falcon strikes the sparrow; that indeed 
would have been cowardly: but it was the Nation which had 
given the victim citizenship and power, on whom their blow fell. 
It was no brave thing in itself for Old John Brown to seize the 
arsenal at Harper's Ferry; considered as an assault on the almost 
solitary watchman, it was cowardly in the extreme : but, when we 
consider what power stood behind that powerless squad, we are 
amazed at the daring of the Hero of Ossawattomie. So it was 
with this magnificent organization. It was not the individual 
negro, scalawag, or carpet-bagger, against whom the blow was 
directed, but the power — the Government — the idea which they 
represented. Not unfrequently, the individual victim was one 
64 



BIRTHPLACE AND EARLY YEARS 

toward whom the individual members of the Klan who executed 
its decree upon him had no little of kindly feeling and respect, 
but whose influence, energy, boldness, or official position, was 
such as to demand that he should be "visited." In most of its 
assaults, the Klan was not instigated by cruelty, nor a desire for 
revenge; but these were simply the most direct, perhaps the only, 
means to secure the end it had in view. The brain, the wealth, 
the chivalric spirit of the South, was restive under what it deemed 
degradation and oppression. This association offered a ready 
and effective method of overturning the hated organization, and 
throwing off the rule which had been imposed upon them. From 
the first, therefore, it spread like wildfire. It is said that the first 
organization was instituted in May, or perhaps as late as the 1st 
of June, 1868; yet by August of that year it was firmly established 
in every State of the South. 

O. Henry was seventeen years old when Judge 
Tourgee left Greensboro, never to return. Recon- 
struction was a thing of the past and the Ku Klux, of 
whom there were about eight hundred in Guilford 
County, had become but a memory. There was 
romance and mystery in it all to the younger generation, 
and 0. Henry shows the traces of it in his later work. 
"I'm half Southerner by nature," says Barnard O'Keefe 
in "Two Renegades." "I'm willing to try the Ku 
Klux in place of the khaki." That was what Guilford 
County did in O. Henry's boyhood. In "The Rose 
of Dixie" Beauregard Fitzhugh Banks was engaged 
as advertising manager of the new Southern magazine 
because his grandfather had been "the Exalted High 
Pillow-slip of the Ku Klux Klan." When the Spanish 

65 



O. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 

War carne, says O. Henry in "The Moment of Victory," 
"The old party lines drawn by Sherman's march and 
the Ku Klux and nine-cent cotton and the Jim Crow 
street-car ordinances faded away." 

Of course Judge Tourgee's residence was to the 
boys of the town a sort of demon's haunt. We never 
passed it without shuddering. Dr/Ruf us W. Weaver, of 
Nashville, Tennessee, gives his impressions as follows:* 

The first money which I, a country boy, ever made was acquired 
by the picking and the selling of cherries, and since I retailed 
them, going from house to house, I grew familiar with all the 
streets of this little town. There was one house, standing far 
back from the street, its yard thickly shaded by elms and oaks, 
which was to me a place of mystery, for here there lived that 
one-eyed scoundrel, that old carpet-bagger, Judge Tourgee, the 
Republican boss of the State, who had sought, so we are told, to 
introduce social equality among negroes and whites; who had 
wrecked the good name and the financial integrity of our fair 
State by his unexampled extravagance when he was in control of 
the State legislature, and who had brought about almost a reign 
of terror, so that he was justly considered by all good people to be 
a veritable monster. 

But to O. Henry, Ku Klux and Judge Tourgee were 
only so many more challenges to the innate romanticism 
of his nature. His most intimate boyhood friend, Mr. 
Thomas H. Tate, writes of those days: 

Of course Will [O. Henry] and I played Ku Klux. My mother 
was a past master at making masks out of newspapers which she 

♦See "A Story of Dreams and Deeds: The Awakening of O. Henry's Town." (Southern 
Woman's Magazine, September, 1915, Nashville, Tennessee.) 

66 



BIRTHPLACE AND EARLY YEARS 

folded and cut out with her scissors. I remember how the negroes 
used to pretend to be terribly frightened and how pleased we were 
with our efforts. The old Presbyterian High School [a child of 
David Caldwell] used to be the meeting place of the genuine article 
and was always held in awe by us boys for a long time on that 
account. You will remember that it stood vacant and gloomy in 
the grove just opposite our home place for many years. As to 
Judge Tourgee, we looked upon him as some sort of a pirate, 
mysterious and blackened by a thousand crimes, and we glanced 
at him covertly when he happened around. He was a sort of 
an ogre, but even then we admired him for his courage and won- 
dered at it, coming as he did from the North. Very dark stories 
were whispered of his doings out in far-off Warnersville, the negro 
settlement out by the Methodist graveyard. He held meetings 
out there that we were almost prepared to say were a species of 
voodooism. 

You will remember that he had a beautiful country place out 
on the Guilford College Road. There was a greenhouse, flowers, 
shrubbery, and an immense rustic arbor there and it was used 
for dances and had an upper and lower floor. Miss Sallie Coleman 
was visiting in Greensboro and either expressed a desire for 
magnolias or Will conceived that she would like to have some, so 
we started about midnight on the six miles' "hike" to West 
Green to spoil and loot. Strange to say, the memory of the moon- 
lit night is with me now even after all these years. It was a per- 
fect night. The moon was full and showering down her mellow 
radiance in great floods. I can see the long white line of road 
stretching out, hear the whippoorwills and smell the good night 
air laden with its species and fragrance and I can see the 
long row of magnolia trees out in the wheat field and orchard 
with their great white flowers gleaming out from the dark foli- 
age. I can also feel the creepy sensation that I felt when we 
mounted the fence and started across the open field for the trees 
and the relief that came when we crossed that fence with the 
loot. We carried them back and laid them on Miss Sallie 's door- 
step. 

67 



O. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 

The incident is peculiarly characteristic There 
were plenty of magnolias nearer O. Henry's home than 
West Green and they could have been had in broad 
daylight for the asking. What his nature craved was 
an opportunity to play the knight, to steep himself 
in romance, to dare the forbidden, to imagine himself 
for six glorious miles one of the venturers of whom he 
was afterward to write:* 

The Venturer is one who keeps his eye on the hedgerows and 
wayside groves and meadows while he travels the road to Fortune. 
That is the difference between him and the Adventurer. Eating 
the forbidden fruit was the best record ever made by a Venturer. 
Trying to prove that it happened is the highest work of the Ad- 
venturesome. To be either is disturbing to the cosmogony of 
creation. 

The man who was in later years to be hailed as "the 
discoverer of the romance in the streets of New York," 
who, as the Atlantic Monthly^ put it, "seems to 
possess the happy gift of picking up gold pieces from 
the asphalt pavement," was a pursuivant of romance 
all his life. 

Sometimes the sources from which he drew his ro- 
mantic inspiration could hardly in themselves be called 
romantic. A playmate writes: 

When Will [O. Henry] was about eight years old, he and I were 
riding around my mother's garden on stick horses, when we found 
a conical mound where potatoes or turnips had been "holed up 

♦"The Venturers." 
tFor July, 1907. 

68 



BIRTHPLACE AND EARLY YEARS 

for winter use. His fertile imagination at once converted this 
into a great castle inhabited by a cruel giant who kept imprisoned 
within its grim walls a beautiful maiden whom he and I, after 
doing valiant battle as her loyal knights, were to triumphantly 
rescue. At this remote period I cannot of course recall all the 
details of this wonderful story as he told it, but I feel sure that if 
it could be faithfully reproduced, it would make thrillingly inter- 
esting reading of its kind. 

But in these early days playing Indian was O. 
Henry's favourite pastime. Indian arrow-heads were 
plentiful around Greensboro and O. Henry, it will be 
remembered, treasured above all others one that he 
had found sticking in the Revolutionary log that 
formed a part of his home. The Indian game took 
many forms but all gave scope and career to his imagi- 
nation as well as zest and vividness to his early reading. 
Mr. Thomas H. Tate describes two forms of the 
Indian play as follows: 

My father kept a large flock of turkeys and the tail feathers of 
these furnished us material for our "war bonnets" when we played 
Indian, much to the detriment of the turkeys' appearance and 
to my father's displeasure. We played this game more than any 
other. Our bows were of our own make as were the arrows, and 
were quite effective as the Poland Chinas, Berkshires, and Chester 
Whites could testify if they had not long since gone the way of all 
good hogs — which is not Jerusalem. These hogs acted in turns 
the part of grizzlies, deer, horses, etc., and often in the excitement 
of the chase an arrow would be shot just a little harder than we 
intended and we would thereupon chase the poor unfortunate to 
exhaustion to get the arrow out of its mark before my father 
returned. We were always successful is my recollection and I 

69 



0. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 

am most sure that it does not fail me for any omission would 
certainly have been visited by such a forcible reminder that it 
would have remained fresh and green in my memory to this day 
and beyond. Another feature of the Indian play, or rather an- 
other setting to our action, was on a muddy bank down at the 
creek. We would take our toy gun, owned in common, go down 
to the soft, slippery bank — strip and paint up properly and wage 
warfare on each other. Dying a thousand deaths was a small 
item to us; we did it thoroughly that many times each day. 

During these years 0. Henry cared little for indoor 
games and sports. In chess he could hold his own with 
the veterans of the town before he had reached his 
teens and in roller-skating he won the championship 
prize. He was also a good boxer and a trained fencer. 
But his favourite recreation was to roam around the 
fields and woods with a congenial companion. A 
book was usually taken along and was read in some 
shady spot or, in winter time, beneath the shelter of 
pines and broomsedge on a favourite hillside over- 
looking old Caldwell's Pond. Even when he went 
fishing or swimming or hunting for chinquapins or hickory 
nuts, he found his chief exhilaration in the breadth 
and freedom of out of doors rather than in the nominal 
object of the jaunt. An outing with a set purpose 
was never to his liking. His pleasure was in merely 
being in the woods or on the bank of a stream, in sur- 
rendering himself to the mood rather than to the 
purpose of the occasion, and in interpreting in waggish 
70 



BIRTHPLACE AND EARLY YEARS 

ways everything said or done or seen. He was always 
shy, his exuberant humour and rare gift of story telling 
seeming to take flight within the walls of a house. He 
preferred the front gate or, as a halfway station, the 
porch. Even in a small group out of doors, if there 
was a stranger or one uncongenial companion, O. 
Henry would not be heard from. But the next day 
he would tell you what happened and with such a 
wealth of original comment and keenness of insight 
and alchemy of exaggeration, all framed in a droll or 
dramatic story, that you would think you had missed 
the time of your life in not being present. 

"His education is about a common school one," 
said O. Henry of himself in the words already cited, 
"but he learns afterward from reading and life." His 
teacher and his only teacher was his aunt, Miss Evelina 
Maria Porter, known to every one in Greensboro as 
Miss Lina. Hers was undoubtedly the strongest 
personal influence brought to bear on O. Henry during 
his twenty years in North Carolina. The death of his 
mother when he was only three years old and the in- 
creasing absorption of his father in futile inventions 
resulted in Miss Lina's taking the place of both parents, 
and this she did not only with whole-souled devotion 
but with rare and efficient intelligence. She was a 
handsome woman with none of her father's happy-go- 
lucky disposition but with much of her mother's direc- 

71 



O. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 

tive ability and with a profound sense of responsibility 
for the welfare of every boy and girl that entered her 
school. She had been educated at Edge worth Female 
Seminary and in the late 'sixties opened a small school 
in one of the rooms of her mother's home. Her mother 
assisted her and in a few years, the school having 
outgrown its accommodations, a small building was 
erected on the Porter premises. Here Miss Lina taught 
until the growth of the public graded school system, 
which Greensboro was the first town in the State to 
adopt, began to encroach upon her domain and to 
render her work less remunerative and less needful. 

When she closed her school she carried with her the 
love and the increasing admiration of all whom she 
had taught. No teacher of a private preparatory school 
in Greensboro ever taught as many pupils as Miss 
Lina or was followed by a heartier plaudit of "Well 
done." She did not, of course, spare the rod. It was 
not the fashion in those days to spare it. At a Friday 
afternoon speech-making one of her pupils started 
gayly off with 

One hungry day a summer ape. 

The emendation must have appealed to the youthful 
O. Henry. Of that, however, we are not informed, but 
we are informed that the perpetrator had hardly 
reached "ape" before he had a lesson impressed upon 

72 



BIRTHPLACE AND EARLY YEARS 

him as to the enormity of adjectival transposition that 
he will carry with him into the next world. 

But there was no cruelty in Miss Lina's disposition. 
She tempered justice if not with mercy at least with 
rigid impartiality and with hearty laughter. I have 
never known a pupil of her school, whether doctor, 
teacher, preacher, merchant, lawyer, or judge, who 
did not say that every application of the rod, so far 
as he was concerned, was amply and urgently deserved. 
To have been soundly whipped by Miss Lina is still 
regarded in Greensboro as a sort of spiritual bond of 
union, linking together the older citizens of the town 
in a community of cutaneous experience for which 
they would not exchange a college diploma. The 
little schoolroom was removed many years ago but 
it still lives in the grateful memory of all who attended 
it and has attained a new immortality in the fame of 
its most illustrious pupil. 

O. Henry attended no other school, and he attended 
this only to the age of fifteen. He was always a 
favourite with Miss Lina and with the other pupils. 
The gentleness of his disposition and his genius for 
original kinds of play won his schoolmates while his 
aunt held up his interest in his books, his good deport- 
ment, and his skill in drawing as worthy of all emula- 
tion. Miss Lina taught drawing, but O. Henry's 
sketches were almost from the start so far superior 

73 



O. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 

to hers that they were generally selected as the models. 
Some of his best free-hand sketches Miss Lina never 
saw, though she deserves the credit of having inspired 
them. She had a way of sending the arithmetic class 
to the blackboard while she paced the floor with the 
bundle of switches. O. Henry would work his "sum" 
with his right hand and sketch Miss Lina with his 
left at the same time. The likeness was perfect, not 
a feature or switch being omitted. The whole thing 
had to be done as she walked from one side of the little 
room to the other with her back to the blackboard. 
To insure safety through instantaneous erasure the 
fingers of the left hand held not only the rapidly moving 
crayon but also the erasing rag. O. Henry's ear, 
long practised told him accurately how near Miss 
Lina was to the end of her promenade, and just before 
her last step was taken and the return trip begun the 
rag would descend and she would behold only a sum so 
neatly worked that it would become the subject of 
another address on good work and model workers. 

But we are more concerned here with Miss Lina's 
method of teaching literature. She had a method, and 
O. Henry's lifelong love of good books was in part the 
fruitage of her method. She did not teach the history 
of literature, but she laboured in season and out of 
season to have her pupils assimilate the spirit of litera- 
ture. Her reading in the best English literature was, 
74 



/ 



BIRTHPLACE AND EARLY YEARS 

if not wide, at least intimate and appreciative. She 
loved books as she loved flowers, because her nature 
demanded them. Fiction and poetry were her means 
of widening and enriching her own inner life, not of 
learning facts about the world without. Scott and 
Dickens were her favourite novelists and Father Ryan 
her favourite poet. She did not measure literature by 
life but life by literature. So did O. Henry at that time, 
but he was later to transpose his standards, putting life 
first. I have often thought that Miss Lina must have 
been in O. Henry's mind when he wrote those suggestive 
words about Azalea Adair in "A Municipal Report" : 

She was a product of the old South, gently nurtured in the 
sheltered life. Her learning was not broad, but was deep and of 
splendid originality in its somewhat narrow scope. She had 
been educated at home, and her knowledge of the world was 
derived from inference and by inspiration. Of such is the precious, 
small group of essayists made. While she talked to me I kept 
brushing my fingers, trying, unconsciously, to rid them guiltily 
of the absent dust from the half-calf backs of Lamb, Chaucer, 
Hazlitt, Marcus Aurelius, Montaigne, and Hood. She was ex- 
quisite; she was a valuable discovery. Nearly everybody nowa- 
days knows too much — oh, so much too much — of real life. 

Miss Lina used regularly to gather her boys about 
her at recess and read to them from some standard 
author. When she saw that she had caught their 
interest she would announce a Friday night meeting 
in the schoolroom at which they would pop corn and 
roast chestnuts and she would continue the readings. 

75 



O. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 

"I did more reading," says O. Henry, "between my 
thirteenth and nineteenth years than I have done 
in all the years since, and my taste at that time was 
much better than it is now, for I used to read nothing 
but the classics. Burton's 'Anatomy of Melancholy' 
and Lane's translation of 'The Arabian Nights' were 
my favourites." During his busy years in New York 
he often remarked to Mrs. Porter: "I never have time 
to read now. I did all my reading before I was twenty." 
This did not, of course, refer to newspapers, which he 
devoured three or four times a day. 

But Miss Lina believed that the best way to learn 
or to appreciate the art of narration was to try your 
hand at it yourself. You might never become a great 
writer, but you would at least have a first-hand ac- 
quaintance with the discipline that well-knit narrative 
involves. In the intervals, therefore, between chest- 
nut roastings and classic readings an original story 
would be started, every one present having to make an 
impromptu contribution when called on. Each con- 
tribution, being expected to grow naturally out of 
the incidents that preceded it, demanded, of course, the 
closest attention to all that had hitherto been said. 
The most difficult role in this narrative program fell, 
of course, to the pupil who tried to halt the windings 
of the story by an interesting and adequate conclusion. 
To do this required not only a memory that retained 
76 



BIRTHPLACE AND EARLY YEARS 

vividly the incidents and characters already projected 
into the story, but a constructive imagination that 
could interpret and fuse them. Need I say that the 
creator of "The Four Million" found his keenest de- 
light in this exercise or that his contributions were 
those most eagerly awaited by teacher and pupil? 

In the long summer evenings after school Miss 
Lina's boys would gather on the old Edgeworth grounds 
for a kind of recreation which the contracted Porter 
premises did not permit. In an English magazine 0. 
Henry had read two serial stories called "Jack Hark- 
away" and "Dick Lightheart." These gave him the 
suggestion for two clubs or societies into which the 
more congenial of Miss Lina's pupils were forthwith 
divided. One was the Brickbats, the other the Union 
Jacks. The Union Jacks, to which O. Henry belonged, 
had selected for their armory one of the few minor 
buildings on the Edgeworth campus which had been 
spared by the fire. Here they had stored a rich col- 
lection of wooden battleaxes, shields, spears, helmets, 
cavalry sabres, and all other things Jane Porterish, 
and here they held nightly conclave. The planning 
of raids which never took place, the discussion of the 
relative values of medieval weapons of which they had 
read, the facile citation of well-known non-existent 
authorities on attack and counter-attack, the bestowal 
of knightly titles on themselves and of less knightly 

77 



^ 



V 






O. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 

on their imagined foes, and the generous use of "Hist!" 
"Zounds!" "Hark ye!" and "By my halidome!" 
make the Union Jacks and the Edgeworth grounds not 
the least of the formative influences that wrought 
upon 0. Henry during his more malleable years. 

"On Friday nights,"* says one of the Union Jacks, 
"it was their custom to sally forth armed and equipped 
from their castle in search of adventure, like knights 
of old, carefully avoiding the dark nooks where there 
were gloomy shadows. Porter was the leading spirit 
in the daring enterprises and many were the hair- 
raising adventures these ten-year-old heroes encoun- 
tered. The shields and battleaxes were often thrown 
hastily aside when safety lay in flight. Ghosts were 
not uncommon in those days, or rather nights, and only 
good, sturdy legs could cope with the supernatural." 

Two other incidents of O. Henry's brief school days 

will illustrate the artistic use that he so often makes 

in his stories of scraps of verse stored in the memory as 

well as the longing that he had to play the venturer 

beyond the confines of his native town and State. By 

way of introduction the reader will recall the dramatic 

manner in which O. Henry uses in "The Caballero's 

Way" these lines: 

Don't you monkey with my Lulu girl 
Or I'll tell you what I'll do 

♦See "Concerning O. Henry" (in the Concept, Converse College, Spartanburg, S. C, March, 
1911). 

78 



BIRTHPLACE AND EARLY YEARS 

Only these two lines are given in the story, once by way 
of prophecy and at the end by way of fulfilment; but 
the character of the singer and the way in which the 
lines are sung enable the reader who is unfamiliar with 
the remaining two lines to guess their import. Mr. 
J. D. Smith, of Mount Airy, North Carolina, writes: 

The first recollection that I can recall of William Porter was when 
I was going to school to Miss Lina Porter. I went to jump out 
of the window and in doing so dislocated my ankle. Not being 
able to walk Will and his brother Shirley carried me into the house, 
and sent for old Doctor Porter. He had about quit practising, 
but the ankle had to be set at once, so Shirley held me on the floor 
while Will seized my leg and the old doctor started to twist my 
ankle off, it seemed to me. I began to cry out, and then Will 
began to sing, and you know he could not sing, but this was 
his song: 

If you don't stop fooling with my Lula 

I tell you what I'll do; 
I'll feel around your heart with a razor 

And I'll cut your liver out too. 

The next adventure that I can recall was : There was a boy who 
lived opposite the school by the name of Robertson, whose father 
was a dentist. He ran away and went on a whaling vessel, but 
finally came back, and we would meet around and hear him tell 
about the sea, and how much money he made catching whales. 
Will and Tom Tate and I would meet and caucus whether we 
would go and catch whales or fight the Indians. Tom was for 
fighting the Indians, and Will and I decided that we would make 
our fortunes catching whales, so we started for the sea. Our 
money gave out at Raleigh and, after spending all we had for 
something to eat, we decided to go home if we could get there. 
We went to the depot and, as luck would have it, we saw a freight 

79 



O. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 

conductor that we knew in Greensboro, and asked him if he would 
let us "brake" for our fare home. He told us to crawl up on the 
box cars, and that two blows meant put on brakes, and one to 
take them off, and for us to mind or he would put us off. That is 
the first and last time I have ever been on top of a box car running. 
After we had gotten up good speed I saw the engine disappear 
around a curve, and it seemed to me that the box car that Will 
and I were on was going direct to the woods. Then we both gave 
up as lost, and lay right down on the running board, and Will 
began to repeat what Miss Lina Porter had taught him, "Now I 
lay me down to sleep," etc. I had my eyes closed, expecting the 
car to hit the woods every minute. Finally, when nothing hap- 
pened, it seemed that we both raised up about the same time, and 
just looked at each other. Then Will began his song, 

If you don't stop fooling with my Lula, 

but in rather a sheepish manner. 

But when 0. Henry's boyhood friends recall him it 
is not usually as a pupil in Miss Lina's school; nor is it 
as the writer in the great city. It is as the clerk in his 
uncle Clark Porter's drug store on Elm Street, opposite 
the old Benbow Hotel. Here he was known and 
loved by old and young, black and white, rich and poor. 
He was the wag of the town, but so quiet, so unobtru- 
sive, so apparently preoccupied that it was his pencil 
rather than his tongue that spread his local fame. 
His youthful devotion to drawing was stimulated in 
large part by the pictures painted by his mother. 
Many of these hung in the Porter home. Some were 
portraits and some landscapes. They were part of the 
atmosphere in which 0. Henry was reared. One of 
80 



BIRTHPLACE AND EARLY YEARS 

his own earliest sketches was made when Edgeworth 
was burned. O. Henry was then only ten years old 
but the picture that he drew of a playmate rescuing 
an empty churn from the basement of the burning 
building, with the milk spilled all over him, is remem- 
bered for its ludicrous conception and for its striking 
fidelity to the boy and to the surroundings. 

His five years in his uncle's drug store meant much 
to him as a cartoonist. His feeling for the ludicrous, 
for the odd, for the distinctive, in speech, tone, appear- 
ance, conduct, or character responded instantly to the 
appeal made by the drug store constituency. Not that 
he was not witty; he was. But his best things were 
said with the pencil. There was not a man or woman 
in the town whom he could not reproduce recognizably 
with a few strokes of a lead pencil. Thus it was a 
common occurrence, when Clark Porter returned to 
the store from lunch, for a conversation like this to 
take place: O. Henry would say: "Uncle Clark, a 
man called to see you a little while ago to pay a bill." 
It should be premised that it was not good form in those 
days to ask a man to stand and deliver either his name or 
the amount due. "Who was it?" his uncle would ask. 
"I never saw him before, but he looks like this," and 
the pencil would zigzag up and down a piece of wrapping 
paper. " Oh, that's Bill Jenkins out here at Reedy Fork. 
He owes me $7.25." 

81 



O. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 

Several years before he left Greensboro the fame 
of his cartoons had spread to other towns, and he 
was urged by Colonel Robert Bingham, a relative by 
marriage and Superintendent of the famous Bingham 
School, then at Mebane, North Carolina, to come at 
once to Bingham's where an education free of charge 
would be given him. "My only direct connection with 
William Sydney as a boy," writes Colonel Bingham, 
"was to offer him his tuition and board in order to 
get the use of his talent as a cartoonist for the amuse- 
ment of our boys. He was an artist with chalk on a 
blackboard. But he could not accept my offer for 
lack of means to provide for his uniform and books." 
This must have been a bitter disappointment though 
O. Henry was never heard to allude to it. 

His pencil sketches sometimes gave offence, es- 
pecially when some admirer would hang them in the 
store window, but rarely. He was absolutely without 
malice. There was about him also a gentleness of 
mamier, a delicacy of feeling, a refinement in speech 
and demeanour that was as much a part of him as his 
humour. I have received no reminiscences of him that 
do not make mention of his purity of speech and 
thought. Yet he was never sissy. He could be 
genuinely funny so easily himself without striking 
beneath the belt that a resort to underhand tactics 
seemed crude and awkward to him. It betrayed 



BIRTHPLACE AND EARLY YEARS 

poverty of resources. In the presence of such methods 
he seemed to me uneasy and bored rather than indignant 
or shocked. No one at least who knew him in the old 
days will wonder at the surprise with which in later 
years he resented the constant comparison of his work 
with that of De Maupassant, though toward the last 
he kept a copy of De Maupassant always at hand. 
No two writers ever lived more diametrically opposed 
than O. Henry and De Maupassant except in technique. 
"I have been called," he said, "the American De 
Maupassant. Well, I never wrote a filthy word in 
my life, and I don't like to be compared to a filthy 
writer." Like Edgar Allan Poe, with whom he had 
little else in common, O. Henry was honoured during 
his whole life with the understanding friendship of a 
few noble-spirited women who in the early days, as in 
the later, helped, I think, to keep his compass true. 

After Miss Lina's school the drug store was to 0. 
Henry a sort of advanced course in human nature and 
in the cartoonist's art. George Eliot tells in "Romola" 
of the part played in medieval Florence by the barber 
shop. A somewhat analogous part was played in Greens- 
boro forty years ago by Clark Porter's drug store. It 
was the rendezvous of all classes, though the rear room 
was reserved for the more elect. The two rooms con- 
stituted in fact the social, political, and anecdotal 
clearing house of the town. The patronage of the 

83 



O. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 

grocery stores and drygoods stores was controlled 
in part by denominational lines, but everybody pat- 
ronized the drug store. It was also a sort of physical 
confessional. The man who would expend only a few 
words in purchasing a ham or a hat would talk half an 
hour of his aches and ills or those of his family before 
buying twenty-five cents' worth of pills or a ten-cent 
bottle of liniment. When the ham or the hat was 
paid for and taken away there was usually an end of 
it. Not so with the pills or the liniment. The patient 
usually came back to continue his personal or family 
history and to add a sketch of the character and con- 
duct of the pills or liniment. All this was grist to 
0. Henry's mill. 

No one, I think, without a training similar to 
O. Henry's, would be likely to write such a story as 
"Makes the Whole World Kin." It is not so much the 
knowledge of drugs displayed as the conversational 
atmosphere of the drug store in a small Southern town 
that gives the local flavour. A burglar, you remember, 
has entered a house at night. "Hold up both your 
hands," he said. "Can't raise the other one," was 
the reply. "What's the matter with it?" "Rheu- 
matism in the shoulder." "Inflammatory?" asked 
the burglar. "Was. The inflammation has gone 
down." " 'Scuse me," said the burglar, "but it just 
socked me one, too." "How long have you had it?" 



BIRTHPLACE AND EARLY YEARS 

inquired the citizen. " Four years." " Ever try rattle- 
snake oil?" asked the citizen. "Gallons. If all the 
snakes I've used the oil of was strung out in a row 
they'd reach eight times as far as Saturn, and the 
rattles could be heard at Valparaiso, Indiana, and 
back." In the end the burglar helps the citizen to dress 
and they go out together, the burglar standing treat. 

The drawings that O. Henry used to make of the 
characters that frequented the drug store were not 
caricatures. There was usually, it is true, an over- 
emphasis put upon some one trait, but this trait was 
the central trait, the over-emphasis serving only to 
interpret and reveal the character as a whole. Ex- 
amining these sketches anew, when the characters 
themselves are thirty odd years older than they were 
then, one is struck with the resemblance still existing. 
In fact, O. Henry's sketches reproduce the characters 
as they are to-day more faithfully than do the photo- 
graphs taken at the same time. The photographs 
have been outgrown, but not the sketches; for the 
sketches caught the central and permanent, while 
the photographs made no distinction. In 0. Henry's 
story called "A Madison Square Arabian Night," an 
artist, picked at random from the "free-bed line," is 
made to say: 

"Whenever I finished a picture people would come to see it, 
and whisper and look queerly at one another. I soon found out 

85 



O. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 

what the trouble was. I had a knack of bringing out in the face 
of a portrait the hidden character of the original. I don't know 
how I did it — I painted what I saw. 

But 0. Henry's distinctive skill, the skill of the story 
teller that was to be, is seen to better advantage in 
his pictures of groups than in his pictures of individuals. 
Into the group pictures, which he soon came to prefer 
to any others, he put more of himself and more of the 
life of the community. They gave room for a sort of 
collective interpretation which seems to me very closely 
related to the plots of his short stories. There is the 
same selection of a central theme, the same saturation 
with a controlling idea, the same careful choice of con- 
tributory details, the same rejection of non-essentials, 
and the same ability to fuse both theme and details 
into a single totality of effect. "He could pack more 
of the social history of this city into a small picture," 
said a citizen of Austin, Texas, "than I thought possible. 
Those of us who were on the inside could read the story 
as if printed. Let me show you," and he entered into 
an affectionate rhapsody over a little pen and ink sketch 
which he still carried in his inside coat pocket. 

An illustration is found in a sketch of the interior of 
Clark Porter's drug store. The date is 1879. Every 
character is drawn to the life, but what gives unity 
to the whole is the grouping and the implied comment, 
rather than criticism, that the grouping suggests. 
86 




»s l«»V MOR-TI.W I T 

"•i»*»»f» shook a i- 



BIRTHPLACE AND EARLY YEARS 

The picture might well be called, to borrow one of O. 
Henry's story names, "The Hypothesis of Failure." 
Indeed Clark Porter's expression, as he gazes over the 
counter, signifies as much. But the failure is due to 
good-natured foibles rather than to faults. The cen- 
tral figure is the speaker. He was a sign painter in 
Greensboro, a dark, Italianate-looking man, whose 
shop was immediately behind the drug store. He was 
one of the first to recognize O. Henry's genius and 
treasured with mingled affection and admiration every 
drawing of the master's that he could find. He did 
not rightfully belong, however, to the inner circle of 
the drug store habitues. If he had, he would never 
have said "I'll pay you for it." He is here shown on 
his way to the rear room. His ostensible quest is ice, 
but the protrusions from the pitcher indicate that 
another ingredient of "The Lost Blend" is a more 
urgent necessity. His plaintive query about cigars 
finds its answer in the abundant remains, mute em- 
blems of hospitality abused, that already bestrew the 
floor. On the right is the Superintendent of the 
Presbyterian Sunday School. He was also a deacon 
and kept a curiosity shop of a store. His specialties 
were rabbit skins and Mason and Hamlin organs. 
But he made his most lasting impression on O. Henry 
as a dispenser of kerosene oil. 

It happened in this way: the Pastor of the Presby- 

87 



O. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 

terian Church had always carried his empty oil can, 
supposed to hold a gallon, to be replenished at the 
Superintendent's font. But one day the Superin- 
tendent's emporium was closed and the pastoral can 
journeyed on to the hardware store of another deacon. 
"Why," said the latter, after careful measurement, 
"this can doesn't hold but three quarts." "That's 
strange," said the minister pensively; "Brother M. 
has been squeezing four quarts into it for twenty 
years." The reply went the rounds of the town at 
once and O. Henry, who no more doubted Brother M's 
good intentions than he did his uncle's or the sign 
painter's, put him promptly into the picture as en- 
titled to all the rights and privileges of the quartette. 
The venerable figure on the left is Dr. James K. Hall, 
the Nestor of the drug store coterie and the leading 
physician of Greensboro. He was a sort of second 
father to O. Henry, whom he loved as a son, though O. 
Henry drew about as many cartoons of him as he filled 
prescriptions made by him. Three years later Doctor 
Hall was to take 0. Henry with him to Texas where 
the second chapter in his life was to begin. Doctor 
Hall was the tallest man in Greensboro and the stoop, 
the pose of the head, the very bend of the knee in the 
picture are perfect. He is sketched at the moment 
when, having contributed his full quota of cigar stumps, 
he is writing a prescription for Clark or 0. Henry to fill. 
88 



BIRTHPLACE AND EARLY YEARS 

O. Henry's reading at this time as well as his draw- 
ing had begun to widen and deepen. At first he had 
been gripped by the dime novel. He was four years 
old when George Munro began to issue his "Ten Cent 
Novels." These became to O. Henry what Skelt's 
melodramas were to Robert Louis Stevenson. "In 
this roll-call of stirring names," says Stevenson,* "you 
read the evidences of a happy childhood." The roll- 
call included "The Red Rover," "The Wood Demon," 
"The Miller and His Men," "Three-fingered Jack," 
and "The Terror of Jamaica." "We had the biggest 
collection of dime novels," says Mr. Thomas H. Tate, 
O. Henry's schoolmate and co-reader, "I have ever 
seen outside of a cigar stand, and I don't think we could 
have been over seven or eight years old. Will soon 
imbibed the style and could tell as good a thriller as 
the author of 'Red-Eyed Rube. ' I can see the circle of 
wide-eyed little fellows lying around in the shade on 
the grass as he opened up with: 'If you had been a close 
observer you might have descried a solitary horseman 
slowly wending his way' or 'The sun was sinking be- 
hind the western hills,' and so on." 

Stevenson's early favourites were plays while O. 
Henry's were stories, but by acting on the banks of 
Caldwell's Pond the more romantic episodes in the 
Munro tales O. Henry turned the dime novel into 



*In "Penny Plain and Twopence Colored." 

89 



O. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 

a sort of home-made melodrama. If we may make 
the distinction between the acquisitive reader and the 
assimilative reader we should say that O. Henry was 
first and last assimilative. For facts as facts in books 
he cared but little, but for the way they were put 
together, for the way they were fused and used, for 
the after-tones and after-glow that the writer's per- 
sonality imparted, he cared everything. We have 
often wondered what effect a college education would 
have had upon him. The effect, we think, that it 
would have had upon Bret Harte or Joel Chandler Harris 
or Mark Twain, that of making each more acquisitive 
and less assimilative. 

After the dime novel came the supernatural story, 
when "the clutch of a clammy hand" replaced the 
solitary horseman and the dutiful sun. Before leaving 
Greensboro, however, O. Henry had passed to the 
stage represented in his own statement: "I used to 
read nothing but the classics." But to "The Arabian 
Nights," a lifelong inspiration, and Burton's "Anatomy 
of Melancholy," must be added the novels of Scott, 
Dickens, Thackeray, Charles Reade, Bulwer Lytton, 
Wilkie Collins, Auerbach, Victor Hugo, and Alexander 
Dumas. His love of Scott came via an interest which 
he soon outgrew in "Thaddeus of Warsaw" and "The 
Scottish Chiefs." He considered "Bleak House" the 
best of Dickens's works and "Vanity Fair" of Thack- 
90 



BIRTHPLACE AND EARLY YEARS 

eray's. Dickens's unfinished story, "The Mystery 
of Edwin Drood," occupied much of his thought 
at this time and lie attempted more than once to 
complete the plot but gave it up. Of Charles Reade's 
masterpiece he said later: "If you want philosophy 
well put up in fiction, read 'The Cloister and the 
Hearth.' I never saw such a novel. There is ma- 
terial for dozens of short stories in that one book 
alone." 

Three other novels made a deep impression upon 
him at this time: Spielhagen's "Hammer and Anvil," 
Warren's "Ten Thousand a Year," and John Esten 
Cooke's "Surry of Eagle's Nest." He thought War- 
ren's character of "Oily Gammon" the best portrait of 
a villain ever drawn and always called one of Greens- 
boro's lawyers by that name. Stonewall Jackson and 
Jeb Stuart, among the characters introduced by Cooke, 
were the Confederate heroes of whom he talked with 
most enthusiasm. 

In fact, his reading and his close confinement in 
the drug store had begun to threaten his health. His 
mother and grandmother had both died of consumption 
and 0. Henry, never robust, was under the obsession 
that he had already entered upon his fateful inheri- 
tance. He took no regular exercise. An occasional 
fishing or seining jaunt out to Caldwell's or Orrell's 
or Donnell's Pond, a serenade two or three times a 

91 



O. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 

week, and a few camping-out trips to Pilot Mountain 
and beyond made almost the only breaks in the mo- 
notony of the drug store regime. But however many 
or few fish might be caught on these jaunts O. Henry 
was always more of a spectator and commentator than 
participant; on the serenades he played what he called 
"a silent tenor" violin or twanged indifferently a guitar, 
the E string of which was usually broken; and on 
the camping-out expeditions his zest and elation were 
due more to freedom from pills and prescriptions than 
to the love of mountain scenery. 

But he did not slight his work in the drug store 
and never intimated that it was distasteful. It was 
only in later years that he said: "The grind in the 
drug store was agony to me." It doubtless was, not 
so much in itself as in the utter absence of outlook. 
No profession attracted him, and there was no one in 
Greensboro doing anything that O. Henry would have 
liked to do permanently. The quest of " What's around 
the corner," a theme that he has wrought into many 
stories and that grew upon him to the last, was his 
nearest approach to a vocation and he had about 
exhausted the possibilities of his birthplace. Sixteen 
years later, at the darkest moment of his life, his 
skill as a pharmacist was to help him as no other 
profession could have helped him. But even if the 
future had been known, there was nothing more to be 



BIRTHPLACE AND EARLY YEARS 

learned about drugs in his uncle's drug store, nor would 
added knowledge have proved an added help. 

The release came unexpectedly. Three sons of 
Dr. James K. Hall, Lee, Dick, and Frank, had gone to 
Texas to make their fortunes. They were tall, lithe, 
blond, iron-sinewed men, and all had done well. Lee, 
the oldest, had become a noted Texas Ranger. As 
"Red Hall" his name was a terror to evil-doers from 
the Red River to the Rio Grande. Though Red Hall 
himself was a modest and silent man, his brief letters to 
his parents, his intermittent visits to Greensboro, and 
the more detailed accounts of his prowess that an 
occasional Texas newspaper brought, kept us aglow 
with excitement. Whenever it was known that Red 
Hall and his wife were visiting in Greensboro there 
was sure to be a gratifying attendance of boys at the 
morning service of the Presbyterian Church. To see 
him walk in and out, to wonder what he was thinking 
about, to speculate on the number of six-shooters that 
he had with him, were opportunities not lightly dis- 
regarded. The drug store was, of course, headquarters 
for the latest from Texas and O. Henry used to hold 
us breathless as he retailed the daring arrests and 
hair-breadth 'scapes of this quiet Greensboro man 
whom the citizens of the biggest State in the Union 
had already learned to lean upon in time of peril. 

In March, 1882, Doctor and Mrs. Hall were planning 

93 



0. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 

to visit their sons in Texas. O. Henry at this time had 
a hacking cough and Doctor Hall used to wince as if 
struck whenever he heard it. "Will," he said, a few 
days before starting on the long trip, "I want you to 
go with us. You need the change, and ranch life will 
build you up." Never in his life had O. Henry re- 
ceived an invitation that so harmonized with every 
impulse of his nature. It meant health and romance. 
It was the challenge of all that he had read and dreamed. 
It was the call of "What's around the corner" with 
Red Hall as guide and co-seeker. 



94 



CHAPTER FIVE 

RANCH AND CITY LIFE IN TEXAS 

IF O. HENRY could have chosen the ranch and the 
ranch manager that he was to visit in Texas he could 
not have done better than to choose the ranch in La 
Salle County that had Lee Hall at its head. He was 
to see much more of Dick Hall than of Lee, but it was 
Lee's personality and Lee's achievement that opened 
the doors of romance to him in Texas and contributed 
atmosphere and flavour to the nineteen stories that 
make up his "Heart of the West." 

Red Hall, as we prefer to call him, was now at the 
height of his fame. The monument erected to him 
in the National Cemetery, in San Antonio, contains 
only the brief inscription: 

Jesse Lee Hall 

1849-1911 

Captain Co. M., 1st U. S. Vol. Inf. 

War with Spain 

But had there been no war with Spain Red Hall's claim 
on the gratitude of the citizens of the Lone Star State 
would have been almost equally well founded. "He 
was the bravest man I ever knew," said the old Co- 

95 



O. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 

manche chief against whose warriors Red Hall had 
led the Texans in the last battle with the tribe in north- 
east Texas. " He did more to rid Texas of desperadoes," 
wrote Mr. John E. Elgin,* "to establish law and order, 
than any officer that Texas ever had. He has made 
more bad men lay down their guns and delivered more 
desperadoes and outlaws into the custody of the courts, 
and used his own gun less, than any other officer in 
Texas." "I have known him intimately for twenty- 
five years," wrote Major-General Jesse M. Leef, 
United States Army Retired, "in peace and in war. 
No braver spirit, no more devoted friend ever passed 
from earth. He was 'the bravest of the brave,' 
and his heart was as tender as that of the most 
lovable woman. His heroic deeds would fill a 
volume." 

Ten years before 0. Henry went to Texas Red 
Hall's name had become one to conjure with. When 
Edward King, at the instance of Scribner's Monthly, 
visited the fifteen ex-slave States in 1873-1874, he 
met Red Hall and paid prompt tribute to his daring 
and to his unique success in awing and arresting men 
without using his pistol. The desperado problem was 
especially acute along the Red River because the 
thieves could cross into Indian Territory where arrest 



*In the Daily Express, San Antonio, March 20, 1911. 
tlbid., March 18, 1911. 

9G 



RANCH AND CITY LIFE IN TEXAS 

was almost impossible. Mr. King describes the situa- 
tion as follows :* 

So frequent had this method of escape become at the time of 
the founding of Denison, that the law-abiding citizens were 
enraged; and the famous deputy-sheriff, "Red Hall," a young man 
of great courage and unflinching "nerve," determined to attempt 
the capture of some of the desperadoes. Arming himself with a 
Winchester rifle, and with his belt garnished with navy revolvers, 
he kept watch on certain professional criminals. One day, soon 
after a horse-thief had been heard from in a brilliant dash of grand 
larceny, he repaired to the banks of the Red River, confident 
that the thief would attempt to flee. 

In due time, the fugitive and two of his friends appeared at 
the river, all armed to the teeth, and while awaiting the ferry- 
boat, were visited by Hall, who drew a bead upon them, and 
ordered them to throw down their arms. They refused, and a 
deadly encounter was imminent; but he finally awed them into 
submission, threatening to have the thief's comrades arrested for 
carrying concealed weapons. They delivered up their revolvers 
and even their rifles, and fled, and the horse-thief, rather than risk 
a passage-at-arms with the redoubtable Hall, returned with him 
to Denison, after giving the valiant young constable some ugly 
wounds on the head with his fist. The passage of the river having 
thus been successfully disputed by the law, the rogues became 
somewhat more wary. 

"Red Hall" seemed to bear a charmed life. He moved about 
tranquilly every day in a community where there were doubtless 
an hundred men who would have delighted to shed his blood; 
was often called to interfere in broils at all hours of the night; 
yet his life went on. He had been ambushed and shot at and 
threatened times innumerable, yet had always exhibited a scorn 
for his enemies, which finally ended in forcing them to admire 
him. 



"The Great South" (1874), pp. 178-179. 

97 



O. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 

Red Hall was made Lieutenant of the Texas Rangers 
in April, 1877, and received his commission as Captain 
in the same year. Of his life in 1882 and of O. Henry's 
association with him, Mrs. Lee Hall has k'ndly written 
a short sketch from which I am permitted to quote : 

At the time Willie Porter was with us in Texas, Captain Hall 
had charge of the ranch in La Salle County belonging to the Dull 
Brothers, of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. He had a contract with 
these gentlemen to buy the land, fence and stock it, and then 
operate the ranch as Superintendent. And it is this ranch and 
his life thereon that 0. Henry has immortalized in many of his 
Texas stories. Captain Hall had to rid La Salle County of a 
notorious band of fence-cutting cattle thieves, and his famous 
result is chronicled in the Bexar County Courts of 1882. He 
finally succeeded in electing "Charlie" McKinney, a former mem- 
ber of his company of Rangers, as sheriff of La Salle County, and 
this officer proved himself most efficient and capable, securing 
peace to that community until his untimely death. 

When we first went to the ranch, we occupied a small frame 
house of one room, about 12 x 8 feet in size. This room was 
sitting-room, bedroom, dining-room, etc., in fact the whole house. 
They then built a log house, about 12 x 35 feet, for Captain Hall 
and myself, and Mr. and Mrs. Dick Hall took possession of the 
log house, and it was here that Willie Porter first stayed with them. 

We lived a most unsettled exciting existence. Captain Hall 
was in constant danger. His life was threatened in many ways, 
and the mail was heavy with warnings, generally in the shape 
of crude sketches, portraying effigies with ropes around the necks, 
and bearing the unfailing inscription "Your Necktie." We usu- 
ally travelled at night, nearly always with cocked guns. It was 
at this period of our life, during the struggle between the legitimate 
owners and the cattle thieves, that 0. Henry saw something of 
the real desperado. 
98 



RANCH AND CITY LIFE IN TEXAS 

Willie Porter himself had a most charming but shy personality 
at this time. I remember him very distinctly and pleasantly. 
At the time he was on the ranch with us he was really living with 
Mr. and Mrs. Dick Hall, though he was a frequent visitor at our 
house. The intercourse between O. Henry and Captain Hall 
was more of a social than a business nature, though he acted as 
cowboy for a period under Captain Hall about the year 1882. 

One does not have to read O. Henry's Texas stories 
very closely to detect the presence of Red Hall. When- 
ever a Ranger officer is mentioned there is a striking 
absence of the strident, swash-buckling, blood-and- 
thunder characteristics that are popularly supposed 
to go with the members of the famous force, but there 
stands before us a calm and determined man who uses 
his pistol with instant precision but only as a last 
resort. This is the real type of the Ranger officer, 
dime novels to the contrary notwithstanding, and this 
is the type that O. Henry has portrayed. In "The 
Caballero's Way," Lieutenant Sandridge of the Rangers 
is described as "six feet two, blond as a Viking, quiet 
as a deacon, dangerous as a machine gun." 

In "An Afternoon Miracle," the conversation falls 
on Bob Buckley, another Ranger Lieutenant : 

"I've heard of fellows," grumbled Broncho Leathers, "what 
was wedded to danger, but if Bob Buckley ain't committed bigamy 
with trouble, I'm a son of a gun." 

" Peculiarness of Bob is," inserted the Nueces Kid, "he ain't 
had proper trainin'. He never learned how to git skeered. Now 

99 



O. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 

a man ought to be skeered enough when he tackles a fuss to hanker 
after readin' his name on the list of survivors, anyway." 

"Buckley," commented Ranger No. 3, who was a misguided 
Eastern man, burdened with an education, "scraps in such a 
solemn manner that I have been led to doubt its spontaneity. 
I'm not quite onto his system, but he fights, like Tybalt, by the 
book of arithmetic." 

"I never heard," mentioned Broncho, "about any of Dibble's 
ways of mixin' scrappin' and cipherin'." 

"Triggernometry?" suggested the Nueces infant. 

"That's rather better than I hoped from you," nodded the 
Easterner, approvingly. "The other meaning is that Buckley 
never goes into a fight without giving away weight. He seems 
to dread taking the slightest advantage. That's quite close to 
foolhardiness when you are dealing with horse-thieves and fence- 
cutters who would ambush you any night, and shoot you in the 
back if they could." 



O. Henry was to remain on the La Salle County 
ranch for two years. Both Mrs. Dick Hall and Mrs. 
Lee Hall were fond of books and, though their libraries 
were constantly augmented by visits to Austin and 
San Antonio, 0. Henry more than kept pace with the 
increase. "His thirst for knowledge of all kinds," 
says Mrs. Dick Hall, "was unquenchable. History, 
fiction, biography, science, and magazines of every 
description were devoured and were talked about with 
eager interest." Tennyson became now his favourite 
poet and, as 0. Henry's readers would infer, remained 
so to the end. Webster's "Unabridged Dictionary" 
was also a constant companion. He used it not merely 
100 



RANCH AND CITY LIFE IN TEXAS 

as a reference book but as a source of ideas. It became 
to him in the isolation of ranch life what Herkimer's 
" Handbook of Indispensable Information" had been 
to Sanderson Pratt and "The Rubaiyat" of Omar 
Khayyam to Idaho Green in "The Handbook of 
Hymen." Mrs. Hall championed Worcester while 
0. Henry believed Worcester a back number and 
Webster the only up-to-date guide. The Webster- 
Worcester differences in spelling and pronunciation 
were at his tongue's end and when he went to Austin 
he used to challenge the boys in the Harrell home to 
"stump" him on any point on which Webster had 
registered an opinion. "I carried Webster's 'Un- 
abridged Dictionary' around with me for two years," 
he said, "while herding sheep for Dick Hall." 

There is more than humour in his review of Webster 
published in the Houston Daily Post:* 



We find on our table quite an exhaustive treatise on various 
subjects written in Mr. Webster's well known, lucid, and piquant 
style. There is not a dull line between the covers of the book. 
The range of subjects is wide, and the treatment light and easy 
without being flippant. A valuable feature of the work is the 
arranging of the articles in alphabetical order, thus facilitating 
the finding of any particular word desired. Mr. Webster's vo- 
cabulary is large, and he always uses the right word in the right 
place. Mr. Webster's work is thorough, and we predict that he 
will be heard from again. 

* February 23, 1896. 

101 



O. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 

Dick Hall had been educated at Guilford College, 
a well-known Quaker school near Greensboro, and had 
learned French and Spanish from a Monsieur Maurice 
of the old Edgeworth Female Seminary. 0. Henry 
began now the study of French and German but more 
persistently of Spanish. French and German were 
taken up as diversions but, as Mexican-Spanish was 
spoken all around him, he absorbed it as a part of his 
environment and in three months was the best speaker 
of it on the ranch. Not content with the "Greaser" 
dialect he bought a Spanish grammar and learned to 
read and speak Castilian Spanish. There is no evi- 
dence that he studied Latin after leaving Greensboro. 
The knowledge of it that he took with him was only 
that of a well-trained drug clerk and enough of Caesar 
to enable him to misquote accurately. 

He had not been long on the ranch before he received 
his cowboy initiation, "the puncher's accolade." The 
ritual varies but the treatment of Curly in "The Higher 
Abdication" typifies the general aim and method: 

Three nights after that Curly rolled himself in his blanket and 
went to sleep. Then the other punchers rose up softly and be- 
gan to make preparations. Ranse saw Long Collins tie a rope 
to the horn of a saddle. Others were getting out their six- 
shooters. 

"Boys," said Ranse, "I'm much obliged. I was hoping you 
would. But I didn't like to ask." 

Half a dozen six-shooters began to pop — awful yells rent the 
102 



RANCH AND CITY LIFE IN TEXAS 

air — Long Collins galloped wildly across Curly 's bed, dragging 
the saddle after him. That was merely their way of gently 
awaking their victim. Then they hazed him for an hour, 
carefully and ridiculously, after the code of cow camps. When- 
ever he uttered protest they held him stretched over a roll 
of blankets and thrashed him woefully with a pair of leather leg- 
gings. 

And all this meant that Curly had won his spurs, that he was 
receiving the puncher's accolade. Nevermore would they be 
polite to him. But he would be their "pardner" and stirrup- 
brother, foot to foot. 

But 0. Henry was still the dreamer and onlooker 
rather than the active or regular participant in the 
cowboy disciplines. He learned or rather absorbed 
with little effort the art of lassoing cattle, of dipping 
and shearing sheep, of shooting accurately from the 
saddle, of tending and managing a horse. Even the 
cowboys conceded his premiership as a broncho-buster. 
He became also a skilled amateur cook, than which no 
other accomplishment was more serviceable on the 
La Salle County ranch. But he had no set or regular 
tasks. He lived with the Halls not as an employee 
but as one of the family. He rode regularly once 
a week to Fort Ewell fifteen miles away and occasion- 
ally to Cotulla which was forty miles from the ranch 
house. But his interest was mainly in the novelty of 
ranch life, in the contrast between it and the Greens- 
boro life, in the strange types of character that he 
learned to know, and in the self-appointed task of 

103 



0. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 

putting what he saw into paragraphs or pictures which 
he promptly destroyed. 

This blend of close observation, avid reading, varied 
experience, and self-discipline in expression was an 
incomparable preparation for his future work. No 
occasional visitor on a ranch, no man who had not 
learned to hold the reins and the pen with equal mas- 
tery, could have described Raidler's ride in "Hygeia 
at the Solito": 



If anything could, this drive should have stirred the acrimonious 
McGuire to a sense of his ransom. They sped upon velvety wheels 
across an exhilarant savanna. The pair of Spanish ponies struck 
a nimble, tireless trot, which gait they occasionally relieved by a 
wild, untrammelled gallop. The air was wine and seltzer, per- 
fumed, as they absorbed it, with the delicate redolence of prairie 
flowers. The road perished, and the buckboard swam the un- 
charted billows of the grass itself, steered by the practised hand 
of Raidler, to whom each tiny distant mott of trees was a signboard, 
each convolution of the low hills a voucher of course and distance. 

None but a sensitive nature, gifted but disciplined, 
could achieve a paragraph like this from "The Missing 
Chord": 

The ranch rested upon the summit of a lenient slope. The 
ambient prairie, diversified by arroyos and murky patches of 
brush and pear, lay around us like a darkened bowl at the bottom 
of which we reposed as dregs. Like a turquoise cover the sky 
pinned us there. The miraculous air, heady with ozone and made 
memorably sweet by leagues of wild flowerets, gave tang and 
104 



RANCH AND CITY LIFE IN TEXAS 

savour to the breath. In the sky was a great, round, mellow 
searchlight which we knew to be no moon, but the dark lantern 
of summer, who came to hunt northward the cowering spring. 
In the nearest corral a flock of sheep lay silent until a groundless 
panic would send a squad of them huddling together with a drum- 
ming rush. For other sounds a shrill family of coyotes yapped 
beyond the shearing-pen, and whippoorwills twittered in the long 
grass. But even these dissonances hardly rippled the clear tor- 
rent of the mocking-birds' notes that fell from a dozen neighbour- 
ing shrubs and trees. It would not have been preposterous for 
one to tiptoe and essay to touch the stars, they hung so bright 
and imminent. 

An interesting impression of 0. Henry at this time 
is given by Mr. Joe Dixon* who had written "Car- 
bonate Days," which he was later to destroy, and was 
looking around for some one to draw the pictures : 

One day John Maddox came in and said: "See here, Joe — there 
is a young fellow here who came from North Carolina with Dick 
Hall, named Will Porter, who can draw like blazes. I believe he 
would be the very one to make the illustrations for your book. 
Dick Hall owns a sheep ranch out not very far from here, and 
Porter is working for him. Now, you might go out there and 
take the book along and tell him just about what you want, and 
let him have a crack at it." 

It looked like a pretty good idea to me, for it seemed to me 
that a man who had seen something of the same life might better 
be able to draw the pictures. 

I found Porter to be a young, silent fellow, with deep, brooding, 
blue eyes, cynical for his years, and with a facile pen, later to be 
turned to word-painting instead of picture-drawing. 



*See "Little Pictures of O. Henry, Part II: Texan Days" by Arthur W. Page (The Bookman, 
New York, July, 1913). 

105 



0. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 

I would discuss the story with Will in the daytime, and at 
night he would draw the pictures. There were forty of them in 
all. And while crude, they were all good and true to the life 
they depicted. 

The ranch was a vast chaparral plain, and for three weeks 
Porter worked on the illustrations, and he and I roamed about 
the place and talked together. We slept together in a rude little 
shack. I became much interested in the boy's personality. He 
was a taciturn fellow, with a peculiar little hiss when amused, 
instead of the boyish laugh one might have expected, and he 
could give the queerest caustic turn to speech, getting off epigrams 
like little sharp bullets, every once in a while, and always unex- 
pectedly. 

One night Mrs. Hall said to me: "Do you know that that 
quiet boy is a wonderful writer? He slips in here every now and 
then and reads to me stories as fine as any Rider Haggard ever 
wrote." 

Mrs. Hall was a highly cultivated woman and her words deeply 
impressed me. After I had gained Will's confidence he let me 
read a few of his stories, and I found them very fine. 

"Will," I said to him one day, "why don't you try your hand 
at writing for the magazines?" But he had no confidence in 
himself, and destroyed his stories as fast as he wrote them. 

"Well, at any rate," I said, "try your hand at newspaper work." 
But he couldn't see it, and went on writing and destroying. 



Only a few of 0. Henry's letters from the ranch to 
friends in Greensboro have been preserved. Most of 
these were written to Mrs. J. K. Hall, mother of Dick 
and Lee, and to Dr. W. P. Beall.* Dr. Beall had 
recently moved to Greensboro from Lenoir, North 
Carolina, to practise medicine with Doctor Hall. He 

•See "Rolling Stones," pages 255-261. 

106 



RANCH AND CITY LIFE IN TEXAS 

became a staunch friend of 0. Henry and suggested 
to the Vesper Reading Club, of Lenoir, that they elect 
the young ranchman to honourary membership. Fol- 
lowing are extracts from O. Henry's letter of acknowl- 
edgment: 

Ladies and Gentlemen of the Vesper Reading Club : 

Some time ago I had the pleasure of receiving a letter from 
the secretary of your association which, on observing the strange 
postmark of Lenoir, I opened with fear and trembling, although 
I knew I didn't owe anybody anything in that city. I began to 
peruse the document and found, first, that I had been elected an 
honourary member of that old and world-renowned body amidst 
thunders of applause that resounded far among the hills of Cald- 
well County, while the deafening cheers of the members were 
plainly heard above the din of the loafers in the grocery store. 
When I had somewhat recovered from the shock which such an 
unexpected honor must necessarily produce on a person of deli- 
cate sensibilities and modest ambition, I ventured to proceed and 
soon gathered that I was requested to employ my gigantic intellect 
in writing a letter to the club. I again picked myself up, brushed 
the dust off, and was disappointed not to find a notice of my 
nomination for governor of North Carolina. 

The origin of the idea that I could write a letter of any interest 
to any one is entirely unknown to me. The associations with 
which I have previously corresponded have been generally in the 
dry goods line and my letters for the most part of a conciliatory, 
pay-you-next-week tendency, which could hardly have procured 
me the high honors that your club has conferred upon me. But 
I will try and give you a truthful and correct account in a brief 
and condensed manner of some of the wonderful things to be seen 
and heard in this country. The information usually desired in 
such a case is in regard to people, climate, manners, customs, and 
general peculiarities. 

107 



O. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 

The people of the State of Texas consist principally of men, 
women, and children, with a sprinkling of cowboys. The weather 
is very good, thermometer rarely rising above 2,500 degrees in 
the shade and hardly ever below 212. There is a very pleasant 
little phase in the weather which is called a "norther" by the natives, 
which endears the country very much to the stranger who experi- 
ences it. You are riding along on a boiling day in September, 
dressed as airily as etiquette will allow, watching the fish trying 
to climb out of the pools of boiling water along the way and won- 
dering how long it would take to walk home with a pocket com- 
pass and 75 cents in Mexican money, when a wind as cold as 
the icy hand of death swoops down on you from the north and the 
"norther" is upon you. 

Where do you go? If you are far from home it depends entirely 
upon what kind of life you have led previous to this time as to 
where you go. Some people go straight to heaven while others 
experience a change of temperature by the transition. "North- 
ers" are very useful in killing off the surplus population in some 
degree, while the remainder die naturally and peacefully in their 
boots. 



After a long imaginary interview with a citizen of 
Texas whose picture was enclosed but has been lost, 
the letter ends: 



But I must bring this hurried letter to a close. I have already 
written far into the night. The moon is low and the wind is still. 
The lovely stars, the "forget-me-nots of the angels," which have 
blossomed all night in the infinite meadows of heaven, unheeded 
and unseen by us poor sleepy mortals for whom they spread their 
shining petals and silvery beams in vain, are twinkling above in 
all their beauty and mystery. The lonely cry of the coyote is 
heard mingling with the noise of a piece of strong Texas bacon 
trying to get out of the pantry. It is at a time like this when 
108 



RANCH AND CITY LIFE IN TEXAS 

all is quiet, when even nature seems to sleep, that old memories 
come back from their graves and haunt us with the scenes they 
bring before us. Faces dead long ago stare at us from the night 
and voices that once could make the heart leap with joy and the 
eye light up with pleasure seem to sound in our ears. With such 
feelings we sit wrapped in thought, living over again our youth 
until the awakening comes and we are again in the present with 
its cares and bitterness. It is now I sit wondering and striving 
to recall the past. Longingly I turn my mind back, groping about 
in a time that is gone, never more to return, endeavoring to 
think and convene my doubting spirit whether or not I fed the 
pup at supper. But listen! I hear the members of the V. R. C. 
rushing to the door. They have torn away the man stationed there 
to keep them inside during the transactions of the evening, and 
I will soon close with the request that the secretary in notifying 
me not to send any more letters may break the terrifying news 
as gently as possible, applying the balm of fair and delusive sen- 
tences which may prepare me at first by leading up gradually to 
the fearful and hope-destroying announcement. 

In a letter* to Mrs. J. K. Hall he confines himself 
to the two ranches of her sons. 



La Salle Co., Texas, January 20, 1883. 
Dear Mrs. Hall: Your welcome letter which I received a 
good while ago was much appreciated, and I thought I would 
answer it in the hopes of getting another from you. I am very 
short of news, so if you find anything in this letter rather incred- 
ible, get Doctor Beall to discount it for you to the proper size. 
He always questions my veracity since I came out here. Why 
didn't he do it when I was at home? Dick has got his new house 
done, and it looks very comfortable and magnificent. It has a 
tobacco-barn-like grandeur about it that always strikes a stranger 



*The Bookman, New York, August, 1913. 

109 



O. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 

with awe, and during a strong north wind the safest place about 
it is outside at the northern end. 

A coloured lady is now slinging hash in the kitchen and has 
such an air of command and condescension about her that the 
pots and kettles all get out of her way with a rush. I think she 
is a countess or a dukess in disguise. Cotulla has grown wonder- 
fully since you left; thirty or forty new houses have gone up and 
thirty or forty barrels of whiskey gone down. The barkeeper is 
going to Europe on a tour next summer, and is thinking of buying 
Mexico for his little boy to play with. They are getting along 
finely with the pasture; there are sixty or seventy men at work 
on the fence and they have been having good weather for working. 
Ed. Brockman* is there in charge of the commissary tent, and issues 
provisions to the contractors. I saw him last week, and he seemed 
very well. 

Lee came up and asked me to go down to the camps and take 
Brockman's place for a week or so while he went to San Antonio. 
Well, I went down some six or seven miles from the ranch. On 
arriving I counted at the commissary tent nine niggers, sixteen 
Mexicans, seven hounds, twenty-one six-shooters, four desperadoes, 
three shotguns, and a barrel of molasses. Inside there were a 
good many sacks of corn, flour, meal, sugar, beans, coffee and 
potatoes, a big box of bacon, some boots, shoes, clothes, saddles, 
rifles, tobacco and some more hounds. The work was to issue 
the stores to the contractors as they sent for them, and was light 
and easy to do. Out at the rear of the tent they had started a 
graveyard of men who had either kicked one of the hounds or 
prophesied a norther. When night came, the gentleman whose 
good fortune it was to be dispensing the stores gathered up his 
saddle-blankets, four old corn sacks, an oil coat and a sheepskin, 
made all the room he could in the tent by shifting and arranging 
the bacon, meal, etc., gave a sad look at the dogs that immediately 
filled the vacuum, and went and slept outdoors. The few days I 
was there I was treated more as a guest than one doomed to 
labour. Had an offer to gamble from the nigger cook, and was 

* A Greensboro boy who also followed the Halls to La Salle County. 

110 



RANCH AND CITY LIFE IN TEXAS 

allowed as an especial favour to drive up the nice, pretty horses 
and give them some corn. And the kind of accommodating old 
tramps and cowboys that constitute the outfit would drop in and 
board, and sleep and smoke, and cuss and gamble, and lie and 
brag, and do everything in their power to make the time pass 
pleasantly and profitably — to themselves. I enjoyed the thing 
very much, and one evening when I saw Brockman roll up to the 
camp, I was very sorry, and went off very early next morning in 
order to escape the heartbreaking sorrow of parting and leave- 
taking with the layout. 

Now, if you think this fine letter worth a reply, write me a long 
letter and tell me what I would like to know, and I will rise up 
and call you a friend in need, and send you a fine cameria obscuria 
view of this ranch and itemised accounts of its operations and 
manifold charms. Tell Doctor Beall not to send me any cake; 
it would make some postmaster on the road ill if he should eat too 
much, and I am a friend to all humanity. I am writing by a 
very poor light, which must excuse bad spelling and uninteresting 
remarks. 

I remain, Very respectfully yours, 

W. S. Porter. 

Everybody well. 



The following letter to Mrs. Hall indicates that 
O. Henry had determined to leave the ranch and to strike 
out for the city. It is his last ranch letter: 

La Salle Co., Texas. 
March 13th '84. 
My Dear Mrs. Hall: 

As you must be somewhat surprised that I haven't been answer- 
ing your letters for a long time, I thought I would write and let 
you know that I never got any of them and for that reason have 
not replied. With the Bugle, Patriot, and your letters stopped, I 

111 



O. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 

am way behind in Greensboro news, and am consumed with a 
burning desire to know if Julius A. Gray has returned from Fayette- 
ville, if Caldcleugh has received a fresh assortment of canary bird 
cages, or if Fishblate's clothing is still two hundred percent below 
first cost of manufacturing, and I know that you will take pity on 
the benighted of the far southwest and relieve the anxiety. Do 
you remember the little hymn you introduced into this country? 

Far out upon the prairie, 

How many children dwell, 
Who never read the Bible 

Nor hear the sabbath bell! 

Instead of praying Sundays, 

You hear their fire-arms bang, 
They chase cows same as Mondays 

And whoop the wild mustang. 

And seldom do they get, for 

To take to church a gal, 
It's mighty hard you bet, for 

Them in the chaparral. 

But I will not quote any more as of course you know all the 
balance, and will proceed to tell you what the news is in this sec- 
tion. Spring has opened and the earth is clothed in verdure new. 
The cowboy has doffed his winter apparel and now appeareth 
in his summer costume of a blue flannel shirt and spurs. An oc- 
casional norther still swoops down upon him, but he buckles on 
an extra six shirts and defies the cold. The prairies are covered 
with the most lovely and gorgeous flowers of every description — ■ 
columbine, jaspers, junipers, hollyhocks, asteroids, sweet-marjoram, 
night-blooming cereus, anthony-overs, percolators, hyoscyamuses, 
bergamots, crystallized anthers, fuchsias, and horoscopes. The 
lovely and deliciously scented meningitis twines its clustering 
112 



/ 



RANCH AND CITY LIFE IN TEXAS 

tendrils around the tall mesquites, and the sweet little purple 
thanatopsis is found in profusion on every side. Tall and perfumed 
volutas wave in the breeze while the modest but highly -flavored 
megatherium nestles in the high grass. You remember how often 
you used to have the train stopped to gather verbenas when you 
were coming out here? Well, if you should come now, the engineer 
would have to travel the whole distance in Texas with engine 
reversed and all brakes down tight, you would see so many rare 
and beautiful specimens. 

I believe everybody that you take any interest in or know is 
well and all right. Everything is quiet except the wind, and that 
will stop as soon as hot weather begins. I am with Spanish like 
Doctor Hall's patients, still "progressing," and can now tell a 
Mexican in the highest and most grammatical Castilian to tie a 
horse without his thinking I mean for him to turn him loose. I 
would like to put my knowledge of the language into profitable 
use, but am undecided whether consulship to Mexico or herd sheep. 
Doctor Beall suggests in his letter to me the other day that I 
come back to North Carolina and buy a shovel and go to work 
on the Cape Fear and Yadkin Valley Railroad, but if you will 
examine a map of your State you will see a small but plainly dis- 
cernible line surrounding the State and constituting its border. 
Over that border I will cross when I have some United States 
bonds, a knife with six blades, an oroide watch and chain, a 
taste for strong tobacco, and a wild western manner intensely 
suggestive of cash. 

I figure up that I made two thousand five hundred dollars last 
spring by not having any money to buy sheep with; for I would 
have lost every sheep in the cold and sleet of last March and a 
lamb for each one besides. So you see a fellow is sometimes up 
and sometimes down, however large a capital he handles, owing 
to the fluctuations of fortune and the weather. 

This is how I console myself by philosophy, which is without a 
flaw when analyzed; but you know philosophy, although it may 
furnish consolation, starts back appalled when requested to come 
to the front with such little necessaries as shoes and circus tickets 

113 



O. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 

and clothes and receipted board bills, etc.; and so some other 
science must be invoked to do the job. That other science has 
but four letters and is pronounced Work. Expect my next letter 
from the busy marts of commerce and trade. 

I hope you will \vrite to me soon, when you have time. Give 
Doctor Hall my highest regards, and the rest of the family. 

I remain 

Very truly yours 
W. S. Porter. 



This letter had hardly reached Mrs. Hall before 0. 
Henry found himself in Austin, the county seat of 
Travis and the capital of Texas. Dick Hall had moved 
to a new ranch in Williamson County, which forms 
the northern boundary of Travis County, and O. Henry 
had decided to give up ranch life and to live in Austin. 
Here he remained until October, 1895, when he went 
to Houston as reporter for the Houston Daily Post. 
Dick Hall had many friends in Austin, among them 
Mr. Joe Harrell, a retired merchant. Mr. Harrell 
was born near Greensboro, in 1811, and every fellow 
Carolinian found a hospitable welcome under his roof. 
When it was decided, therefore, that O. Henry was to 
remain in Austin, Mr. Harrell invited the young Tar- 
Heel and fellow countyman to come to his home, and 
here he lived for three years. Mr. Harrell and his 
three sons became devoted friends of the newcomer, 
whom they found to be timid and retiring but an 
unequalled entertainer in a coterie of intimates and a 
114 



RANCH AND CITY LIFE IN TEXAS 

genius with his pencil. Mr. Harrell would accept 
nothing for board or lodging but regarded O. Henry 
as an adopted son. 

O. Henry's stay in Austin was marked by the same 
sort of quick and wide-reaching reaction to his environ- 
ment that had already become characteristic and that 
was to culminate during his eight years in New York. 
As the confinement in the Greensboro drug store had 
whetted his appetite for the freedom of the ranch, so 
the isolation of ranch life had made him all the more 
eager for the social contacts of city life. "A man may 
see so much," says O. Henry, in "The Hiding of Black 
Bill," "that he'd be bored to turn his head to look at a 
$3,000,000 fire or Joe Weber or the Adriatic Sea. But 
let him herd sheep for a spell, and you'll see him split- 
ting his ribs laughing at * Curfew Shall Not Ring To- 
night,' or really enjoying himself playing cards with 
ladies." Austin had only about ten thousand in- 
habitants in 1884 but as the capital of the great State, 
and the seat of the rapidly growing State University, 
it was peculiarly representative of the old and the 
new, of the East and the West and the Southwest. 
To the knight-errant of "What's around the corner" 
it offered if not a wide at least a varied field of oppor- 
tunity, and he proceeded forthwith to occupy. 

His friends in Austin say that no one ever touched 
the city at so many points or knew its social strata as 

115 



O. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 

familiarly as O. Henry. Occasional clerk in a tobacco 
store and later in a drug store, bookkeeper for a real 
estate firm, draftsman in a land office, paying and 
receiving teller in a bank, member of a military com- 
pany, singer in the choirs of the Presbyterian, Baptist, 
and Episcopal churches, actor in private theatricals, 
editor of a humorous paper, serenader and cartoon 
ist, O. Henry would seem to have viewed the little city 
from all possible angles. The only segment of the life 
that he seems not to have touched was the Univer- 
sity. 

And yet he can hardly be said to have identified 
himself with Austin or with Austin interests. Every- 
body who knew him liked him and felt his charm, but 
few got beneath the surface. "Our times lapped by- 
only one year," says Harry Peyton Steger,* "and the 
freshman knew not that the wizard was around the 
corner, but my acquaintance there helped me in my 
search when I went there in January of this year. 
The first ten days on the ground showed me that Will 
Porter (it was only in his post-Texan days that people 
called him ' Sydney,' I believe) was known to hundreds 
and that few knew him. In his twenties and later in 
New York, he was the same lone wolf. But to his 
charm and brilliance all bear witness." In "The 
Man about Town," O. Henry questions four classes of 

*The Cosmopolitan, October, 1912. 

116 



RANCH AND CITY LIFE IN TEXAS 

people about his multiform subject only to find at last 
that the real man about town is the one who puts the 
questions. 

But O. Henry differed from his typical man about 
town as widely as Jaques differed from Hamlet, or as a 
yachtsman differs from a seasoned tar. He worked hard 
when he did work and went " bumming, " as he called 
it,' by way of recreative reaction To go bumming 
was his phrase for a sort of democratic romancing. One 
of his Austin intimates, Dr. D. Daniels, says:* 



Porter was one of the most versatile men I had ever met. He 
was a fine singer, could write remarkably clever stuff under all 
circumstances, and was a good hand at sketching. And he was 
the best mimic I ever saw in my life. He was one of the genuine 
democrats that you hear about more often than you meet. Night 
after night, after we would shut up shop, he would call to me to 
come along and "go bumming." That was his favorite expres- 
sion for the night-time prowling in which we indulged. We 
would wander through streets and alleys, meeting with some of 
the worst specimens of down-and-outers it has ever bean my privi- 
lege to see at close range. I've seen the most ragged specimen of 
a bum hold up Porter, who would always do anything he could 
for the man. His one great failing was his inability to say "No" 
to a man. 

He never cared for the so-called "higher classes," but watched 
the people on the streets and in the shops and cafes, getting his 
ideas from them night after night. I think that it was n this way 
he was able to picture the average man with such marvellous 
fidelity. 



♦The Bookman, New York, July, 1913. 

117 



O. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 

Another chum of those days writes :* 

As a business man, his face was calm, almost expressionless; 
his demeanour was steady, even calculated. He always worked 
for a high class of employers, was never wanting for a position, 
and was prompt, accurate, talented, and very efficient; but the 
minute he was out of business — that was all gone. He always 
approached a friend with a merry twinkle in his eye and an ex- 
pression which said: "Come on, boys, we are going to have a lot 
of fun," and we usually did. . . . He lived in an atmosphere 
of adventure that was the product of his own imagination. He was 
an inveterate story-teller, seemingly purely from the pleasure of 
it, but he never told a vulgar joke, and as much as he loved humour 
he would not sacrifice decency for its sake and his stories about 
women were always refined. 

The first paying position that 0. Henry held in 
Austin was that of bookkeeper for the real estate firm 
of Maddox Brothers and Anderson. He worked here 
for two years at a salary of a hundred dollars a month. 
"He learned bookkeeping from me," said Mr. Charles 
E. Anderson, "and I have never known any one to 
pick it up with such ease or rapidity. He was number 
one, and we were loath to part with him." Mr. 
Anderson persuaded O. Henry to live with him after 
his resignation as bookkeeper, and Mr. John Maddox 
offered him the money to go to New York and study 
drawing but 0. Henry declined. 

In the meantime, Dick Hall had been elected Land 






♦ The Bookman, New York, July, 1913. 

118 






RANCH AND CITY LIFE IN TEXAS 

Commissioner of Texas and O. Henry applied for a 
position under him. "The letter of application," 
said Mrs. Hall, "was a masterpiece. Nothing that 
I have since seen from his pen seemed so clever. We 
kept it and re-read it for many years but it has mysteri- 
ously disappeared." Dick replied that if 0. Henry 
could prepare himself in three months for the office of 
assistant compiling draftsman, the position would 
be given him. "It was wonderful how he did it," 
said Dick, "but he was the most skilful draftsman in 
the force." 

O. Henry remained in the General Land Office for 
four years, from January, 1887, to January, 1891. The 
building stands just across from the Capitol on a high 
hill, and both its architecture and its storied service 
moved O. Henry's pen as did no other building in 
Texas. Many years after he had left the State he 
was to reproduce in "Georgia's Ruling," "Witches' 
Loaves," and "Buried Treasure" either the General 
Land Office itself or some tradition or experience as- 
sociated with it. "People living in other States," 
he writes,* "can form no conception of the vastness and 
importance of the work performed here and the signif- 
icance of the millions of records and papers composing 
the archives of this office. The title deeds, patents, 
transfers, and legal documents connected with every 

* "Bexar Scrip No. 2692." The story appeared in the Rolling Stone, May 5, 1894. 

119 



O. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 

foot of land owned in the State of Texas are filed here." 
The building ^ie describes as follows: 

Whenever you visit Austin you should by all means go to see 
the General Land Office. As you pass up the avenue you turn 
sharp round the corner of the court house, and on a steep hill 
before you you see a mediaeval castle. You think of the Rhine; the 
"castled crag of Drachenfels" ; the Lorelei; and the vine-clad 
slopes of Germany. And German it is in every line of its archi- 
tecture and design. The plan was drawn by an old draftsman 
from the "Vaterland," whose heart still loved the scenes of his 
native land, and it is said he reproduced the design of a certain 
castle near his birthplace with remarkable fidelity. 

Under the present administration a new coat of paint has vul- 
garized its ancient and venerable walls. Modern tiles have re- 
placed the limestone slabs of its floors, worn in hollows by the 
tread of thousands of feet, and smart and gaudy fixtures have 
usurped the place of the time-worn furniture that has been con- 
secrated by the touch of hands that Texas will never cease to 
honor. But even now, when you enter the building, you lower 
your voice, and time turns backward for you, for the atmosphere 
which you breathe is cold with the exudations of buried genera- 
tions. The building is stone with a coating of concrete; the walls 
are immensely thick; it is cool in the summer and warm in the 
winter; it is isolated and sombre; standing apart from the other 
state buildings, sullen and decaying, brooding on the past. 

« 

But the happiest event of O. Henry's life in Texas 
was his marriage on July 5, 1887, to Miss Athol 
Estes, the seventeen-year-old daughter of Mrs. G. P. 
Roach. It was a case of love at first sight on O. Henry's 
part but he deferred actual courtship until Miss Athol 
had finished school. Mr. and Mrs. Roach, however, 
120 



RANCH AND CITY LIFE IN TEXAS 

entered a demurrer on the score of health. Miss 
Athol's father had died of consumption as had 0. 
Henry's mother and grandmother. But the young 
lovers were not to be denied. An elopement was 
instantly planned and romantically carried out. Bor- 
rowing a carriage from Mr. Charles E. Anderson they 
drove out at midnight to the residence of Dr. R. K. 
Smoot, the Presbyterian minister in whose choir they 
both sang. Mr. Anderson was dispatched to the 
Roach home to sue for peace. Forgiveness was at last 
secured, and O. Henry never had two stauncher friends 
than Mr. and Mrs. Roach. In the darkest hours of his 
life their love for him knew no waning and their faith 
in him neither variableness nor the shadow of turning. 

To the manner of his marriage O. Henry occasion- 
ally referred in later years and always with the deepest 
feeling and the tenderest memory. The moonlight 
drive under the trees, the borrowed carriage, the wit- 
ticisms on the way, the parental opposition, the feeling 
of romantic achievement, the courage and serenity 
and joy of the little woman at his side, his own sense 
of assured and unclouded happiness for the future — 
these came back to him touched with pathos but radi- 
ant and hallowed in the retrospect. Surely a whiff 
of that July night transfigures these words,* written 
eighteen years later : 



*From "Sisters of the Golden Circle." 

121 



0. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 

On the highest rear seat was James Williams, of Cloverdale, 
Missouri, and his Bride. Capitalize it, friend typo — that last 
word — word of words in the epiphany of life and love. The scent 
of the flowers, the booty of the bee, the primal drip of spring 
waters, the overture of the lark, the twist of lemon peel on the cock- 
tail of creation — such is the bride. Holy is the wife; revered the 
mother; galliptious is the summer girl — but the bride is the certi- 
fied check among the wedding presents that the gods send in 
when man is married to mortality. . . . James Williams 
was on his wedding trip. Dear kind fairy, please cut out those 
orders for money and 40 H. P. touring cars and fame and 
a new growth of hair and the presidency of the boat club. 
Instead of any of them turn backward — oh, turn backward and 
give us just a teeny-weeny bit of our wedding trip over again. 
Just an hour, dear fairy, so we can remember how the grass and 
poplar trees looked, and the bow of those bonnet strings tied 
beneath her chin — even if it was the hatpins that did the work. 
Can't do it? Very well; hurry up with that touring car and the 
oil stock, then. 

0. Henry found in his married life not only happiness 
but the incentive to effort that he had sorely lacked. 
It was an incentive that sprang from perfect congenial- 
ity and from the ambition to make and to have a home, 
Mrs. Porter was witty and musical. She was also 
stimulatively responsive to the drolleries of her hus- 
band. She cooperated with him in his sole journalistic 
venture and helped him with the society items of 
the Houston Daily Post. If the thought of her did 
not shape the character of Delia in "The Gift of the 
Magi," it might have done so. She did not live to see 
him become famous but, if she had, she would have 
1&£ 



RANCH AND CITY LIFE IN TEXAS 

been the first to say "I told you so." It is certainly 
no accident that the year of his marriage is also the 
year in which he begins to rely on his pen as a supple- 
mentary source of income. The editor of the Detroit 
Free Press writes, September 4, 1887: 

My Deak Sir: 

Please send your string for month of August. And it would 
please me to receive further contributions at once. Send a budget 
every week. 

Sincerely, 

A. Mosley. 

And again three months later: 

My Dear Mr. Porter: 

Your string for November just in. Am sorry it is not longer. 
Check will be sent in a few days. 

Can you not send more matter — a good big installment every 
week? I returned everything that I felt I could not use, in order 
that we might resume operations on a clear board. Hereafter 
all unavailable matter shall be sent back within two or three days. 
After you get a better idea of the things we do not want, the 
quantity to be returned will be very small. 

About the same time presumably, though the note 
is undated, the editors of Truth write from New York: 

We have selected "The Final Triumph" and "A Slight In- 
accuracy," for which you will receive a check for $6. 

In the printed form used by the editors of Truth, con- 
tributions were classified as Jokes, Ideas, Verses, 

123 



O. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 

Squibs, Poems, Sketches, Stories, and Pictures. The 
two contributions accepted from O. Henry were entered 
on the line reserved for Sketches. The earliest record 
of an accepted short story that I have found, the 
earliest evidence that O. Henry had turned from para- 
graph writing to really constructive work, is in the 
following note written ten years later: 

New York, 
Dec. 2, 1897. 
W. S. Porter, Esq., 
211 E. 6th St., 

Austin, Texas. 
Dear Sir: Your story, "The Miracle of Lava Canon,"* is ex- 
cellent. It has the combination of humane interest with dramatic 
incident, which in our opinion is the best kind of a story. If you 
have more like this, we should be glad to read them. We have 
placed it in our syndicate of newspapers. The other stories we 
return herewith. They are not quite available. 

Very truly yours 

The S. S. McClure Co. 

The four years in the General Land Office were 
the happiest years of O. Henry's life in Texas. The 
work itself was congenial, he found time for drawing, 
his co-workers in the office were his warm personal 
friends, and his occasional contributions of jokes, 
squibs, sketches, etc., could be counted upon whenever 
needed to help out the family larder. There was born 

*This story, which deserves all that is here said of it, was entered for copyright by the 
McClure Syndicate, September 11, 1898, marked " for publication September 18, 1898." It was 
undoubtedly to this story that O. Henry referred in later years when he said: "My .first story 
was paid for but I never saw it in print." 

124 



RANCH AND CITY LIFE IN TEXAS 

to him also at this time a daughter, Margaret Worth 
Porter, whom the proud parents journeyed twice to 
Greensboro to exhibit and whose devotion to her 
father was to equal, though it could not surpass, that 
of the father to his only child. 

But a change was imminent. Dick Hall ran for 
governor of Texas in 1891 but by a close margin was 
defeated by James Hogg. His term as Land Com- 
missioner had expired, and, on January 21, 0. Henry 
resigned his position as assistant compiling draftsman 
and entered the First National Bank of Austin as 
paying and receiving teller. The change, as will be 
seen, was to prove a disastrous one, the only rift in the 
cloud being that the new position was to widen his 
range of story themes and to force him to rely wholly 
upon his pen for a living. He had hitherto coquetted 
with his real calling, using it in Scott's words "as a 
staff, not as a crutch," as a buffet lunch rather than as 
a solid meal. Early in December, 1894, he resigned 
his position in the bank but not until he had begun to 
edit a humorous weekly which he called the Rolling 
Stone. 

The first issue of the Rolling Stone appeared in 
Austin on April 28, 1894, and the last on April 27, 
1895. It can hardly be said to have flourished between 
these dates: it only flickered. "It rolled for about a 
year," said O. Henry, "and then showed unmistakable 

125 



O. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 

signs of getting mossy. Moss and I never were friends, 
and so I said good-bye to it." " It was one of the means 
we employed," writes Mr. James P. Crane, of Chicago, 
one of the editors, "to get the pleasure out of life and 
never appealed to us as a money-making venture. 
We did it for the fun of the thing." This may have 
been 0. Henry's motive in the beginning, but after 
resigning his position in the bank the financial side 
of the Rolling Stone assumed a new importance. 
In fact, the following letter to Mr. Crane shows that 
0. Henry was looking to his little paper for income: 

San Antonio, Dec. 20, 1894. 
Dear Jeems : 

I am writing this in the City of Tomales. Came over last night 
to work up the Rolling Stone a little over here. Went over the 
city by gas-light. It is fearfully and wonderfully made. I quit 
the bank a day or two ago. I found out that the change was 
going to be made, so I concluded to stop and go to work on the 
paper. 

Are you still in Chicago and what are the prospects? I tell 
you what I want to do. I want to get up in that country some- 
where on some kind of newspaper. Can't you work up something 
for us to go at there? If you can I will come up there any time 
at one day's notice. I can worry along here and about live but 
it is not the place for one to get ahead in. You know that, don't 
you? See if you can't get me a job up there, or if you think our 
paper would take, and we could get some support, what about 
starting it up there? 

I'm writing you on the jump, will send you a long letter in a 
few days which will be more at length than a shorter one would. 

Yours as ever 

Bill. 

126 



"Jas xioiiDJs Brons 



AUSTIN AND BAN ANTONIO, TEXAS, SATURDAY, FEBBUABY 2, 1895. PBICE FIVE CBNTS. 




~ ^^ * w^W^££ 



w 



DEPARTM EN T CLERK . -Mr. Legator, il you *a« to-save money (or the State, why don't you stop that tealc instead of cuttmg down my salary?" 



ABISTOCRACY VS. HASH. 



10. 



HAD THE DROPOV HIM. 



A LUNAR EPISODE. 






K-l ft d«llio« bu.u ol mob* From I 

Slrwef IMS lae/ Mro, tad tUiom 
AlUtifUioiwprftrftllftd. Bftftt.ftwl 



THE RIGHT Ui ^ 



THE ROLLING STONE One 
Year aud hall a doem ol 11,11'. beat 
Cabinet Pttotograph* In Si oo! Do yon 
want photos ol your wile, baby, bror" r. 



SPECIMEN PAGE OF "THE ROLLING STONE" 



RANCH AND CITY LIFE IN TEXAS 

The visit to San Antonio was the beginning of the 
end of the Rolling Stone. In the issue of January 26, 
1895, the announcement is made that the paper is 
"published simultaneously in Austin and San Antonio, 
Texas, every Saturday." Encouraging letters had 
been received from Bill Nye and John Kendrick 
Bangs but when 0. Henry was over-persuaded to launch 
the Rolling Stone into the Callaghan mayoralty fight 
in San Antonio its doom was sealed. The Austin 
end of the little weekly had already lost heavily through 
a picture with a humorous underline which O. Henry 
had innocently inserted. The picture was of a German 
musician brandishing his baton. Underneath were 
the lines: 

With his baton the professor beats the bars, 
'Tis also said he beats them when he treats; 

But it made that German gentleman see stars 
When the bouncer got the cue to bar the beats. 

"For some reason or other," says Doctor Daniels,* 
"that issue alienated every German in Austin from 
the Rolling Stone and cost us more than we were able 
to figure out in subscriptions and advertisements." 

But the by-products of the visits to San Antonio 
were later to reimburse O. Henry far over and beyond 
the immediate loss incurred. Cities were always in a 
peculiar sense his teachers, and from his editorial trips to 

♦The Bookman, New York, July, 1913. 

127 



O. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 

the most interesting city of the Southwest he was later to 
find material for " Hygeia at] the Solito," "The Enchanted 
Kiss," "The Missing Chord," "The Higher Abdication," 
"Seats of the Haughty," and "A Fog in Santone." 

After the demise of the Rolling Stone, the oppor- 
tunity "to get on some kind of newspaper," about 
which he had written to Mr. Crane, did not present 
itself until nearly six months had passed. In the mean- 
time he was supporting himself by writing for any 
paper that paid promptly for humorous contribu- 
tions. The Rolling Stone had given him the oppor- 
tunity of a tryout and he seems never afterward to 
have doubted that writing of some sort was the pro- 
fession for which he was best fitted. His experience 
in the bank had also convinced him that business was 
not his calling. "Frequently when I entered the 
bank," said a citizen of Austin, "O. Henry would put 
hastily aside some sketch or bit of writing on which he 
was engaged, before waiting on me." He had lived 
in his writings long before he attempted to live by them. 

In July, 1895, O. Henry decided to accept a call 
to Washington, D. C. His household furniture was 
sold by way of preparation and he was on the eve of 
starting when Mrs. Porter became ill. The doctors 
found that the long-dreaded blow had fallen. She had 
consumption. O. Henry was unwilling to leave her or 
to attempt so long a journey with her. He continued, 
128 



RANCH AND CITY LIFE IN TEXAS 

therefore, his contribution of odds and ends to news- 
papers and in October was writing chiefly for the Plain 
Dealer of Cleveland, Ohio, but hoping in the meanwhile 
to secure a more permanent position nearer home. 

The opportunity came^when Colonel R. M. John- 
ston offered him a position on the Houston Daily Post. 
Mrs. Porter was not well enough at first to accom- 
pany her husband to Houston but in a little while she 
was pronounced much better and joined him. Pros- 
pects were brighter now than they had been since his 
resignation from the General Land Office. The Post 
was one of the recognized moulders of public opinion 
in the Southwest and O. Henry's work gained for it 
new distinction. "The man, woman, or child," wrote 
an exchange, "who pens 'Postscripts' for the Houston 
Post, is a weird, wild-eyed genius and ought to be cap- 
tured and put on exhibition." 

"He became," said an editorial in the Post at the 
time of O. Henry's death, "the most popular member 
of the staff." "As a cartoonist," continues the Post, 
"Porter would have made a mark equal to that he 
attained as a writer had he developed his genius; 
but he disliked the drudgery connected with the draw- 
ing and found that his sketches were generally spoiled 
by any one else who took them to finish. In the early 
days he illustrated many of his stories. Those were 
days before the present development of the art of 

129 



O. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 

illustration, whether for magazine or newspaper, and 
he did most of the work on chalk, in which the drawing 
was made, a cast of lead being afterward made with 
more or less general results of reproducing the drawing 
in the shape of printing. The generality of the result 
was at times disheartening to the artist and Porter 
never followed his natural knack for embodying his 
brilliant ideas in drawings." His salary was quickly 
raised from fifteen to twenty-five dollars a week and 
he was advised by Colonel Johnston to go to New York 
where his talents would be more adequately rewarded. 

O. Henry's first column appeared in the Post on 
October 18, 1895, his last on June 22, 1896. He began 
with "Tales of the Town" but changed quickly to 
"Some Postscripts and Pencillings," ending with 
"Some Postscripts." But the names made no differ- 
ence. O. Henry wrote as he pleased. The cullings 
that follow will give a better idea of his matter and 
manner at this time than mere comment, however 
extended, could do. The tribute to Bill Nye has the 
added interest of containing O. Henry's only known 
reference to American humour as a whole : 

(October 18, 1895) 
Of an editor: He was a man apparently of medium height, 
with light hair and dark chestnut ideas. 

(October 81, 1895) 
"Speaking of the $140,000,000 paid out yearly by the govern- 
ment in pensions," said a prominent member of Hood's Brigade 
ISO 



RANCH AND CITY LIFE IN TEXAS 

to the Post's representative, "I am told that a man in Indiana 
applied for a pension last month on account of a surgical operation 
he had performed on him during the war. And what do you sup- 
pose that surgical operation was?" 

"Haven't the least idea." 

"He had his retreat cut off at the battle of Gettysburg!" 

(November 3, 1895) 
LOOKING FORWARD 

Soft shadows grow deeper in dingle and dell, 

Night hawks are beginning to roam ; 
The breezes are cooler; the owl is awake, 
The whippoorwill calls from his nest in the brake; 
When 

the 

cows 

come 

home. 

The cup of the lily is heavy with dew; 

In heaven's aerial dome 
Stars twinkle; and down in the darkening swamp 
The fireflies glow, and the elves are a-romp; 
When 

the 

cows 

come 

home. 

And the populist smiles when he thinks of the time 

That unto his party will come; 
When at the pie counter they capture a seat, 
And they'll eat and eat and eat and eat 
Till 

the 

cows 

come 

home. 

131 






O. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 

(November 6, 1895) 
EUGENE FIELD 

No gift his genius might have had, 
Of titles high in church or State, 

Could charm him as the one he bore 
Of children's poet laureate. 



He smiling pressed aside the bays 
And laurel garlands that he won, 

And bowed his head for baby hands 
To place a daisy wreath upon. 



He found his kingdom in the ways 
Of little ones he loved so well; 

For them he tuned his lyre and sang 
Sweet simple songs of magic spell. 



i 



Oh, greater feat to storm the gates 
Of children's pure and cleanly hearts, 

Than to subdue a warring world 
By stratagems and doubtful arts ! 



So, when he laid him down to sleep 
And earthly honors seemed so poor; 

Methinks he clung to little hands 
The latest, for the love they bore. 



A tribute paid by chanting choirs 
And pealing organs rises high; 

But soft and clear, somewhere he hears 
Through all, a child's low lullaby. 



132 



RANCH AND CITY LIFE IN TEXAS 

(November 27, 1895) 
An old woman who lived in Fla. 
Had some neighbors who all the time ba. 

Tea, sugar, and soap, 

Till she said: "I do hope 
I'll never see folks that are ha." 



(December 1, 1895) 

"You're at the wrong place," said Cerberus. "This is the 
gate that leads to the infernal regions, while this is a passport to 
heaven that you've handed me." 

"I know it," said the departed Shade wearily, "but it allows 
a stop-over here. You see, I'm from Galveston, and I've got 
to make the change gradually." 

(December 12, 1895) 

A young lady in Houston became engaged last summer to one 
of the famous shortstops of the Texas baseball league. Last week 
he broke the engagement, and this is the reason why: 

He had a birthday last Tuesday, and she sent him a beautiful 
bound and illustrated edition of Coleridge's famous poem, "The 
Ancient Mariner." The hero of the diamond opened the book 
with a puzzled look. 

"What's dis bloomin' stuff about anyways?" he said. 

He read the first two lines : 

"It is the Ancient Mariner, 
And he stoppeth one of three" — 

The famous shortstop threw the book out the window, stuck out 
his chin, and said: "No Texas sis can't gimme de umpire face like 
dat. I swipes nine daisy cutters outer ten dat comes in my garden, 
dat's what." 

(February 26, 1896) 
Bill Nye, who recently laid down his pen for all time, was a 
unique figure in the field of humor. His best work probably 

133 



O. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 

more nearly represented American humor than that of any 
other writer. Mr. Nye had a sense of the ludicrous that was keen 
and judicious. His humor was peculiarly American in that it 
depended upon sharp and unexpected contrasts and the bringing 
of opposites into unlooked for comparison for its effect. Again 
he had the true essence of kindliness, without which humor is 
stripped of its greatest component part. His was the child's 
heart, the scholar's knowledge, and the philosopher's view of life. 
The world has been better for him, and when that can be said of 
a man, the tears that drop upon his grave are more potent than 
the loud huzzas that follow the requiem of the greatest conqueror 
or the most successful statesman. The kindliest thoughts and 
the sincerest prayers follow the great humanitarian — for such he 
was — into the great beyond, and such solace as the hearty condole- 
ment of a million people can bring to the bereaved loved ones of 
Bill Nye, is theirs. 

When O. Henry ceased to write for the Houston 
Daily Post he had closed a significant chapter in his 
life. Had he died at this time those who had followed 
his career closely would have seen in him a mixture of 
Bill Nye and Artemus Ward with an undeveloped 
vein of Eugene Field. There was a hint of many things 
which he was later to use as embellishments of his art, 
but there was no indication of the essential nature of 
the art that was to be embellished. A character in 
Fletcher's "Love's Pilgrimage" is made to say: 

Portly meat, 
Bearing substantial stuff, and fit for hunger, 
I do beseech you, hostess, first; then some light garnish, 
Two pheasants in a dish. 
134 






RANCH AND CITY LIFE IN TEXAS 

But O. Henry served the "light garnish" first. His 
"two pheasants" were the Rolling Stone and his column 
in the Houston Daily Post. His more "substantial 
stuff" came after these, but was not the natural out- 
growth from them. 

Nothing that he had written for these two publica- 
tions was selected by him for reproduction in the 
volumes of his short stories. The so-called stories 
that he read to Mrs. Hall on the ranch and those that 
appeared now and then in the Rolling Stone were 
sketches or extravaganzas rather than real stories at 
grips with real life. "I was amazed," said Mrs. Hall, 
"when I learned that 0. Henry was our Will Porter. 
I had thought that he might be a great cartoonist but 
had never thought of his being a master of the modern 
short story." 

O. Henry was now to begin a period of severe trial 
and of prolonged and unmerited humiliation. But 
he was to come out of it all with purpose unified and 
character deepened. Experience with the seamy side 
of life was to do for him what aimless experimentation 
with literary forms would never have done. 



135 



CHAPTER SIX 

THE SHADOWED YEARS 

WHEN 0. Henry left Houston, never to return, he 
left because he was summoned to come immediately 
to Austin and stand trial for alleged embezzlement of 
funds while acting as paying and receiving teller of 
the First National Bank of Austin. The indictments 
charged that on October 10, 1894, he misappropriated 
$554.48; on November 12, 1894, $299.60; and on 
November 12, 1895, $299.60. 

Had he gone he would certainly have been acquitted. 
He protested his innocence to the end. "A victim 
of circumstances" is the verdict of the people in Austin 
who followed the trial most closely. Not one of them, 
so far as I could learn after many interviews, believed 
or believe him guilty of wrong doing. It was notorious 
that the bank, long since defunct, was wretchedly 
managed. Its patrons, following an old custom, used 
to enter, go behind the counter, take out one hundred 
or two hundred dollars, and say a week later: "Porter, 
I took out two hundred dollars last week. See if I 
left a memorandum of it. I meant to." It must have 
recalled to O. Henry the Greensboro drug store. Long 
136 



THE SHADOWED YEARS 

before the crash came, he had protested to his friends 
that it was impossible to make the books balance. 
" The affairs of the bank," says Mr.* Hyder E. Rollins,* 
of Austin, "were managed so loosely that Porter's 
predecessor was driven to retirement, his successor to 
attempted suicide." 

There can be no doubt that 0. Henry boarded the 
train at Houston with the intention of going to Austin. 
I imagine that he even felt a certain sense of relief that 
the charge, which had hung as a dead albatross about 
his neck, was at last to be unwound, and his innocence 
publicly proclaimed. His friends were confident of 
his acquittal and are still confident of his innocence. 
If even one of them had been with O. Henry, all would 
have been different. But when the train reached 
Hempstead, about a third of the way to Austin, 
O. Henry had had time to pass in review the scenes 
of the trial, to picture himself a prisoner, to look into 
the future and see himself marked with the stigma of 
suspicion. His imagination outran his reason, and 
when the night train passed Hempstead on the way 
to New Orleans, 0. Henry was on it. 

His mind seems to have been fully made up. He 
was not merely saving himself and his family from a 
public humiliation, he was going to start life over 
again in a new place. His knowledge of Spanish and 

•The Bookman, New York, October, 1914. 

137 



O. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 

his ignorance of Honduras made the little Central 
American republic seem just the haven in which to 
cast anchor. How great the strain was can be meas- 
ured in part by the only reference of the sort, so far 
as I know, that O. Henry ever made to his life in the 
little Latin American country: "The freedom, the 
silence, the sense of infinite peace, that I found here, 
I cannot begin to put into words." His letters to Mrs. 
Porter from Honduras show that he had determined 
to make Central America his home, and that a school 
had already been selected for the education of his 
daughter. 

How long O. Henry remained in New Orleans, on 
his way to or from Honduras, is not known; long 
enough, however, to draw the very soul and body of 
the Crescent City into the stories that he was to write 
years afterward. With his usual flair for originality, 
he passes by Mardi Gras, All Saints' Day, Quatorze 
Juillet, and crevasses; but in "Whistling Dick's Christ- 
mas Stocking," "The Renaissance of Charleroi," 
"Cherchez La Femme," and "Blind Man's Holiday," 
he has pictured and interpreted New Orleans and its 
suburbs as only one who loved and lived the life could 
do. 

It is probable that he merely passed through New 
Orleans on his way to Honduras and took the first 
available fruit steamer for the Honduran coast, arriv- 
138 



THE SHADOWED YEARS 

ing at Puerto Cortez or Criba or Trujillo. At any 
rate, he was in Trujillo and was standing on the wharf 
when he saw a man in a tattered dress suit step from 
a newly arrived fruit steamer. "Why did you leave 
so hurriedly?" asked O. Henry. "Perhaps for the 
same reason as yourself," replied the stranger. "What 
is your destination?" inquired 0. Henry. "I left 
America to keep away from my destination," was the 
reply; "I'm just drifting. How about yourself?" 
"I can't drift," said O. Henry; "I'm anchored." 

The stranger was Al Jennings, the leader of one of 
the most notorious gangs of train robbers that ever 
infested the Southwest. In "Beating Back," which 
Mr. Jennings was to publish eighteen years later, one 
may read the frank confession and life story of an out- 
law and ex-convict who at last found himself and 
"came back" to live down a desperate past. That 
he has made good may be inferred from the spirit of 
his book, from the high esteem in which he is held by 
friends and neighbours, and from the record of civic 
usefulness that has marked his career since his return. 

But when he and 0. Henry met at Trujillo Mr. 
Jennings was still frankly a fugitive outlaw. He and 
his brother Frank had chartered a tramp steamer in 
Galveston, and the departure had been so sudden thai 
they had not had time to exchange their dress suits 
and high hats for a less conspicuous outfit. Mr. 

139 



0. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 

Jennings and his brother had no thought of continuing 
their career of brigandage in Latin America. They 
were merely putting distance between them and the 
detectives already on their trail. 0. Henry joined 
them and together they circled the entire coast of 
South America. This was 0. Henry's longest voyage 
and certainly the strangest. When the money was 
exhausted, "Frank and I," says Mr. Jennings, "decided 
to pull off a job to replenish the exchequer. We 
decided to rob a German trading store and bank in 
northern Texas, and I asked Porter if he would join 
us. 'No,' he said, 'I don't think I could.' 'Well, 
Bill,' I said, 'you could hold the horses, couldn't you?' 
'No,' said Porter, 'I don't think I could even hold the 
horses.'" 

In these wanderings together Mr. Jennings probably 
saw deeper into one side of 0. Henry's life than any one 
else has ever seen. In a letter to Harry Peyton Steger, 
he writes: "Porter was to most men a difficult proposi- 
tion, but when men have gone hungry together, feasted 
together, and looked grim death in the face and laughed, 
it may be said they have a knowledge of each other. 
Again, there is no period in a man's life that so brings 
out the idiosyncrasies as gaunt and ghastly famine. 
I have known that with our friend and could find no 
fault. If the world could only know him as I knew 
him, the searchlight of investigation could be turned 
140 



THE SHADOWED YEARS 

on his beautiful soul and find it as spotless as a bar of 
sunlight after the storm-cloud had passed." In a letter 
just received Mr. Jennings says: "Porter joined with 
Frank in urging me to leave the 'Trail,' establish 
ourselves in Latin America, and forget the past. 
Quite often, indeed, he spoke of his wife and his child 
and there was always a mist in his eye and a sob in his 
throat." 

O. Henry's letters to Mrs. Porter came regularly 
after the first three weeks. The letters were inclosed 
in envelopes directed to Mr. Louis Kreisle, in Austin, 
who handed them to Mrs. Porter. "Mrs. Porter used 
to read me selections from her husband's letters," 
said Mrs. Kreisle. "They told of his plans to bring 
Athol [Mrs. Porter] and Margaret to him as soon as 
he was settled. He had chosen a school for Margaret 
in Honduras and was doing everything he could to 
have a little home ready for them. At one time he said 
he was digging ditches. He also mentioned a chum 
whom he had met. Sometimes they had very little 
to eat, only a banana each. He had a hard time but 
his letters were cheerful and hopeful and full of affec- 
tion. Mr. and Mrs. Roach were, of course, willing 
to provide for Athol and Margaret but Athol did not 
want to be dependent. She said she did not know how 
long they would be separated, so she planned to 
do something to earn some money. She commenced 

141 



O. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 

taking a course in a business college but ill health 
interfered. When Christmas came she made a point 
lace handkerchief, sold it for twenty-five dollars, and 
sent her husband a box containing his overcoat, fine 
perfumery, and many other delicacies. I never saw 
such will power. The only day she remained in bed 
was the day she died." 

O. Henry did not know till a month later that this 
box was packed by Mrs. Porter when her temperature 
was 105. As soon as he learned it, he gave up all hope 
of a Latin American home and started for Austin, 
determined to give himself up and to take whatever 
medicine fate or the courts had in store for him. He 
passed again through New Orleans, and, according to 
the trial reports, arrived in Austin on February 5, 
1897. His bondsmen were not assessed, but the amount 
of the bond was doubled and O. Henry went free till 
the next meeting of the Federal Court. 

All of his time and thought was now given to Mrs. 
Porter. When she was too weak to walk O. Henry 
would carry her to and from the carriage in which they 
spent much of their time. His wanderlust seemed stilled 
at last and these days of home-keeping and home- 
tending were happy days to both, though they knew 
that the end was near. Mrs. Porter had been almost 
reared in the Sunday-school and the neighbours 
say that it was a familiar sight on Sunday mornings, 
142 



THE SHADOWED YEARS 

in the last spring and summer, to see 0. Henry and 
his wife driving slowly beneath the open windows of 
the Presbyterian Church. Here they would remain 
unseen by the congregation till the service was nearly 
over. Then they would drive slowly back. Each 
service, it was feared, might be the last. The end 
came on July 25th. 

After many postponements O. Henry's case came 
to trial in February, 1898. He pleaded not guilty 
but seemed indifferent. "I never had so non-communi- 
cative a client," said one of his lawyers. "He would 
tell me nothing." 0. Henry begged his friends not 
to attend the trial and most of them respected his 
wishes. In fact, he seemed, as usual, to be only a 
spectator of the proceedings. He was never self- 
defensive or even self-assertive, and at this crisis of 
his life he showed an aloofness which, however hard 
to understand by those who did not know him, was as 
natural to him as breathing. He simply retreated into 
himself and let the lawyers fight it out. 

One error in the indictment was so patent that it 
is hard to understand how it could have gone un- 
challenged. He was charged, as has been stated, with 
having embezzled $299. CO on November 12, 1895, 
"the said W. S. Porter being then and there the teller 
and agent of a certain National Banking Association, 
then and there known and designated as the First 

143 



0. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 

National Bank of Austin." Nothing in 0. Henry's 
life is better substantiated than that on November 
12, 1895, he was living in Houston and had resigned his 
position in the Austin bank early in December, 1894. 
And yet the reader will hardly believe that this fla- 
grant inconsistency in the charge against him has re- 
mained to this moment unnoticed. The foreman of 
the grand jury and the foreman of the trial jury are 
reported to have regretted afterward that they had 
voted to convict. "0. Henry was an innocent man," 
said the former, "and if I had known then what I 
know now, I should never have voted against him." 
As the contradiction in time and place was not one 
of the things that either foreman learned later, one 
cannot help asking what it was that led to conviction. 
The answer is easy. O. Henry lost his case at 
Hempstead, not at Austin. "Your Grand Jurors," 
so runs the charge, "further say that between the days 
the sixth (6th) of July A. d. 1896 and the fifth (5th) 
of February a. d. 1897 the aforesaid W. S. Porter was 
a fugitive and fleeing from justice and seeking to avoid 
a prosecution in this court for the offense hereinbefore 
set out." This was true, and the humiliation of it and 
the folly of it were so acutely felt by O. Henry that he 
remained silent. I think it unlikely that he noticed 
the impossible date, November 12, 1895, for a more 
dateless and timeless man never lived. To a trusted 
144 



THE SHADOWED YEARS 

friend in New York, O. Henry declared that Conrad's 
"Lord Jim" made an appeal to him made by no other 
book. "I am like Lord Jim," he added, "because we 
both made one fateful mistake at the supreme crisis of 
our lives, a mistake from which we could not recover." 

"Lord Jim" has been called the greatest psychological 
study of cowardice that modern literature has to its 
credit. But Lord Jim was no coward. When he 
knew that the ship was about to sink, a certain irreso- 
lution took possession of him and he did not and could 
not wake the passengers. He did not think of saving 
himself, but his mind conjured up the horrors of panic, 
the tumult, the rush, the cries, the losing fight for place, 
and it seemed infinitely better to him that they should 
all go down in peace and quiet. "Which of us," says 
Conrad, "has not observed this, or maybe experienced 
something of that feeling in his own person — this 
extreme weariness of emotions, the vanity of effort, 
the yearning for rest? Those striving with unreason- 
able forces know it well — the shipwrecked castaways 
in boats, wanderers lost in a desert, men battling 
against the unthinking might of nature or the stupid 
brutality of crowds." 

Like Lord Jim, 0. Henry was governed more by 
impulse than by reason, more by temperament than 
by commonsense. The sails ruled the rudder in his 
disposition, not the rudder the sails. When he changed 

145 



0. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 

trains at Hempstead it was not cowardice that moti- 
vated his action. It was the lure of peace and quiet 
under Honduran skies, the call of a new start in life, 
the challenge of a novel and romantic career. The 
same faculties that were to plot his stories were now 
plotting this futile jaunt to Central America. The 
vision swept him along till, like Lord Jim, he had time 
to reflect and still longer time to regret. 

The jury rendered its verdict of guilty on February 
17, 1898, and on March 25, 0. Henry was sentenced 
to imprisonment in the Ohio Penitentiary at Columbus 
for the period of five years. Immediately after being 
sentenced he wrote from the jail in Austin the following 
letter to his mother-in-law, Mrs. G. P. Roach: r 

Dear Mrs. Roach: 

I feel very deeply the forbearance and long suffering kindness 
shown by your note, and thank you much for sending the things. 
Right here I want to state solemnly to you that in spite of the jury's 
verdict I am absolutely innocent of wrong doing in that bank mat- 
ter, except so far as foolishly keeping a position that I could not 
successfully fill. Any intelligent person who heard the evidence 
presented knows that I should have been acquitted. After I 
saw the jury I had very little hopes of their understanding enough 
of the technical matters presented to be fair. I naturally am 
crushed by the result, but it is not on my own account. I care 
not so much for the opinion of the general public, but I would 
have a few of my friends still believe that there is some good in me. 

O. Henry entered the penitentiary on April 25, 1898, 
and came out on July 24, 1901. On account of good 
146 



THE SHADOWED YEARS 

behaviour his term of confinement was reduced from 
five years to three years and three months. There 
was not a demerit against him. 

When 0. Henry passed within the walls of the Ohio 
prison he was asked: "What is your occupation?'' 
"I am a newspaper reporter," he replied. There was 
little opportunity for that profession in that place, 
but the next question may be said to have saved his 
life: "What else can you do?" "I am a registered 
pharmacist," was the reply, almost as an afterthought. 
The profession which he loathed in Greensboro because 
it meant confinement was now, strangely enough, 
to prove the stepping-stone to comparative freedom. 
His career as a drug clerk in the prison, his fidelity to 
duty, the new friendships formed, the opportunity 
afforded him to write, and his quick assimilation of 
short story material from the life about him are best 
set forth in the testimony of those who knew him dur- 
ing these years of seeming eclipse. 

Dr. John M. Thomas was then chief physician at 
the prison. His letter is especially interesting for 
the light that it throws on the origin of the stories 
contained in "The Gentle Grafter": 

Druggists were scarce and I felt I was fortunate in securing the 
services of Sydney Porter, for he was a registered pharmacist 
and unusually competent. In fact, he could do anything in the 
drug line. Previous to his banking career in Texas he had worked 

117 



O. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 

in a drug store in North Carolina, so he told me. While Porter 
was drug clerk Jimmie Consedine, one time proprietor of the old 
hotel Metropole in New York, was a muse. Consedine spent all 
his time painting. Out of this came a falling out with 0. Henry. 
Consedine painted a cow with its tail touching the ground. Porter 
gave a Texas cowman's explanation of the absurdity of such a 
thing and won Consedine 's undying hatred. 

After serving some time as drug clerk 0. Henry came to me and 
said: "I have never asked a favor of you before but there is one 
I should like to ask now. I can be private secretary to the steward 
outside [meaning that he would be outside the walls and trusted]. 
It depends on your recommendation." I asked him if he wanted 
to go. When he said he did, I called up the steward, Mr. C. N. 
Wilcox, and in twenty minutes 0. Henry was outside. 

He did not associate very much with any of the other inmates 
of the prison except the western outlaws. Very few of the officers 
or attendants at the prison ever saw him. Most convicts would 
tell me frankly how they got into jail. They did not seem to 
suffer much from mortification. 0. Henry, on the other hand, 
was very much weighed down by his imprisonment. In my experi- 
ence of handling over ten thousand prisoners in the eight years I 
was physician at the prison, I have never known a man who was 
so deeply humiliated by his prison experience as O. Henry. He 
was a model prisoner, willing, obedient, faithful. His record is 
clear in every respect. 

It was very seldom that he mentioned his imprisonment or in 
any way discussed the subject. One time we had a little misunder- 
standing about some alcohol which was disappearing too rapidly 
for the ordinary uses to which it was put. I requested that he 
wait for me one morning so that I could find out how much alcohol 
he was using in his night rounds, and after asking him a few 
questions he became excited when he thought I might be suspicion- 
ing him. "I am not a thief," he said, "and I never stole a thing 
in my life. I was sent here for embezzling bank funds, not one 
cent of which I ever got. Some one else got it all, and I am 
doing time for it." 
148 



THE SHADOWED YEARS 

You can tell when a prisoner is lying as well as you can in the 
case of anybody else. I believed O. Henry implicitly. I soon 
discovered that he was not the offender in the matter of the alcohol. 
But the question disturbed him and he asked me once or twice 
afterward if I really thought that he ever stole anything. 

Once in a long while he would talk about his supposed crime 
and the great mistake he made in going to Central America as 
soon as there was any suspicion cast on him. When he disappeared 
suspicion became conviction. After his return from Central 
America, when he was tried, he never told anything that would 
clear himself. While he was in Central America he met Al Jen- 
nings who was likewise a fugitive from justice. After they re- 
turned to the States they renewed their friendship at the prison, 
where both eventually landed. Jennings was also one of the 
trusted prisoners and in the afternoon they would often come into 
my office and tell stories. 

0. Henry liked the western prisoners, those from Arizona, Texas, 
and Indian Territory, and he got stories from them all and re- 
told them in the office. Since reading his books I recognize many 
of the stories I heard there. As I mentioned before, he was an 
unusually good pharmacist and for this reason was permitted to 
look after the minor ills of the prisoners at night. He would 
spend two or three hours on the range or tiers of cells every night 
and knew most of the prisoners and their life stories. 

"The Gentle Grafter" portrays the stories told him on his night 
rounds. I remember having heard him recount many of them. 
He wrote quite a number of short stories while in prison and it 
was a frequent thing for me to find a story written on scrap paper 
on my desk in the morning, with a note telling me to read it before 
he sent it out. We would often joke about the price the story 
would bring, anything from twenty-five to fifty dollars. He wrote 
them at night in from one to three hours, he told me. 

The night doctor at the penitentiary was Dr. George 
W. Williard. He also became a friend and admirer of 

149 



O. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 

O. Henry and was the first to recognize the original of 
Jimmy Valentine, the leading character in "A Retrieved 
Reformation." Dr. Williard contributes the following 
reminiscences : 



He was the last man in the world you would ever pick for a 
crook. Toward every one he was quiet, reserved, almost taciturn. 
He seldom spoke unless in answer. He never told me of his hopes, 
his aims, his family, his crime, his views of life, his writing, in 
fact, he spoke of little save the details of his pharmaceutical work 
in which he was exceptionally careful and efficient. The chief 
means by which I judged his character was by the way he acted 
and by one or two little incidents which brought out the man's 
courage and faithfulness. 

I respected him for his strict attention to business, his blameless 
conduct, and his refusal to mix in the affairs of other prisoners. 
He seemed to like me personally because I did not ask him per- 
sonal questions and because I showed that I felt as one intelligent 
man must feel toward another under such circumstances. So 
we grew to be friends. 

He was as careful and conscientious as if the drug store at the 
prison had been his own property. His hours were from six in 
the evening to six in the morning. Often I left at midnight with 
Porter in charge and I knew things would run as regularly and 
effectively until morning as if I had remained. Porter was almost 
as free from prison life as any one on the outside. He received all 
the magazines and did lots of reading. He did not sleep in a 
cell but on a cot in the hospital during the day time. His ability 
and conduct were such that, once he had demonstrated them, 
there was never any danger that he would have to eat and sleep 
and work in the shops with other prisoners. 

Convicts who were ill or who claimed to be ill would be brought 
into the hospital in charge of a guard and, ranging themselves 
along the front of the drug counter, would be given medicines by 
150 



THE SHADOWED YEARS 

the drug clerk according to my instructions. It was part of 
Porter's duties to know a couple of hundred drugs by number as 
well as by name and to be able to hand them out without mistake 
quickly. Constant desire of prisoners to escape work by feigning 
illness necessitated the physician and his clerk being always on 
their guard against shams. Often some violent convict, when 
refused medicine, would rebel. 

One night a huge negro to whom I refused a drug became abu- 
sive. The guard who had brought him in had stepped away for a 
moment and the prisoner directed at me a fearful torrent of pro- 
fanity. I was looking around for the guard when Sydney Porter, 
my drug clerk, went over his counter like a panther. All of his 
hundred and seventy or eighty pounds were behind the blow he 
sent into the negro's jaw. The negro came down on the floor 
like a ton of brick. Instantly Porter was behind his counter 
again. He did not utter a word. 

Another time a certain piece of equipment was stolen from the 
penitentiary hospital. There had been a good deal of stealing 
going on and I was responsible when it happened during my 
"trick." I mentioned this to Porter and he gave me the name of 
a certain official of the prison who, he said, had stolen the property. 
I told the warden who had taken the property and said it would 
have to come back at once. In twelve hours it was back. Porter 
said in his quiet way: "Well, I see you got in your work." It 
was the only time he ever told on any one and he did it merely out 
of loyalty to me. Although nearly every drug clerk at the prison 
was at some time or other guilty of petty trafficking in drugs 
or whisky, Porter was always above reproach. He always had 
the keys to the whisky cabinet, yet I never heard of his taking a 
drink. 

The moment I read O. Henry's description and character de- 
lineation of Jimmy Valentine in "A Retrieved Reformation," I 
said, "That's Jimmy Connors through and through." Connors 
was in for blowing a postoffice safe. He was day drug clerk in 
the prison hospital at the same time Porter was night clerk. The 
men were friendly and often, early in the evening, before Connors 

151 



O. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 

went to bed, he would come and talk to Porter and tell him of his 
experiences. 

Although Connors admitted himself guilty of many other jobs 
he claimed not to be guilty of the one for which he was serving 
time. Another man who resembled Connors had blown a safe 
and Connors was arrested and sent to prison for it. Because of 
fear of implicating himself in other jobs of which he was guilty, 
he said, he never told on the other man but went to prison innocent. 
This statement was borne out early in his term in the penitentiary 
by the arrival of the sheriff who had sent him up and who, in the 
meantime, had arrested the real culprit and secured from him a 
confession. To right his wrong the sheriff went to Washington, 
but the inspectors knew Jimmy Connors and said he doubtless 
was guilty of some other jobs and had best stay in prison for safe- 
keeping. He did stay, giving 0. Henry the chance to meet him 
and find inspiration for "A Retrieved Reformation." 

Porter never said a word to me about his own crime, but another 
man once told me that Porter had told him that he had been 
"railroaded" to prison, so I think that he secretly held himself 
unjustly dealt with. The fact that he and Jimmy Connors 
agreed on this point in their respective cases doubtless drew them 
together. 

Poor Jimmy! He never lived to try any sort of reformation 
on the outside. He died of kidney trouble in the penitentiary 
hospital, May 19, 1902, which was after Porter left and before 
Jimmy Valentine became famous in story, play, and song. He 
was a wonderful chemist and I still, in my daily practice, use one 
formula he gave me. It is not saying too much, I am sure, to 
state that the recent craze for "crook" plays in the theatrical 
world may be traced directly to this dead prisoner, for from him 
O. Henry drew the character which made the story famous, and 
from the story came the first "crook" play which won wide suc- 
cess, leading the way to the production of many similar plays. 
You would recognize instantly, if you knew customs and con- 
ditions, that the prison atmosphere at the beginning of the story 
was gathered bodily from Ohio penitentiary life as Porter knew it. 
152 



THE SHADOWED YEARS 

Mr. J. B. Rumer, a night guard at the penitentiary, 
was thrown with O. Henry during the latter's working 
hours, from midnight till dawn. There was little con- 
versation between them, O. Henry being absorbed in 
his stories. Mr. Rumer says: 

After most of his work was finished and we had eaten our mid- 
night supper, he would begin to write. He always wrote with 
pen and ink and would often work for two hours continuously 
without rising. He seemed oblivious to the world of sleeping 
convicts about him, hearing not even the occasional sigh or groan 
from the beds which were stretched before him in the hospital 
ward or the tramp of the passing guards. After he had written 
for perhaps two hours he would rise, make a round of the hospital, 
and then come back to his work again. He got checks at different 
times and once told me that he had only two stories rejected while 
he was in prison. 

Another side of 0. Henry impressed Alexander 
Hobbs, a coloured prisoner who acted as valet to one 
of the physicians. Hobbs was afterward the political 
boss of the coloured voters of Columbus : 

Mr. Porter was from the South and he always called colored 
men niggers. I never got fresh with him. I treated him with 
respect but let him alone. One day he asked me about it and I 
said: "Mr. Porter, I know you all don't want nothing to do with 
no black folks." He laughed and after that we always got along 
fine. 

Mr. Porter was a nurse over in the hospital and he hadn't been 
in long when by mistake one day Warden E. G. Coffin was given 
an overdose of Fowler's solution of arsenic. The right antidote 
couldn't be found and the day physician, the nurses, and all the 

153 



O. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 

prison officers were crowded around the bed on which the warden 
was lying, in great fright. Everybody was panic-stricken and it 
looked like the warden, who was unconscious, was going to die 
with doctors and a drug store right there beside him. 

Then Mr. Porter, who had been upstairs nursing a sick prisoner, 
came walking down. He had learned what was the matter. I 
can just see him yet, as he came down them stairs, as quiet and 
composed as a free citizen out for a walk. " Be quiet, gentlemen," 
he says, and walks over to the drug store and takes charge, just as 
easy as if he owned the prison. Then he mixes a little drink, just 
like mixing a soda water. In an hour the warden was out of 
danger and the next day Mr. Porter was made night drug clerk. 

O. Henry's letters from prison tell their own story. 
The life was intolerable at first but he lived in constant 
expectation of a pardon. When this hope failed he 
turned all the more whole-heartedly to story writing. 
His appointment by Doctor Thomas, in October, 1900, 
to a position in the steward's office (see page 148) was 
evidently a turning-point in his life and was so recog- 
nized by him. It is needless to say, as the letters show, 
that Margaret did not know where her father was. 
From the moment of his sentence O. Henry's chief 
concern was that she should never know. And she 
did not know till he told her face to face. 

May 18, 1898. 
Deah Mr. Roach: 

I wrote you about ten days ago a letter which I sent through the 
office of this place. I could not say in it what I wanted to as the 
letters are all read here and they are very strict about what is in 
them. I now have the opportunity to send an occasional letter 
154 



THE SHADOWED YEARS 

by a private way, and to receive them by the same means. I want 
to give you some idea of the condition of things here. 

I accidentally fell into a place on the day I arrived that is a light 
one in comparison with others. I am the night druggist in the 
hospital, and as far as work is concerned it is light enough, and 
all the men stationed in the hospital live a hundred per cent, 
better than the rest of the 2,500 men here. There are four doctors 
and about twenty-five other men in the hospital force. The 
hospital is a separate building and is one of the finest equipped 
institutions in the country. It is large and finely finished and has 
every appliance of medicine and surgery. 

We men who are on the hospital detail fare very well compara- 
tively. We have good food well cooked and in unlimited abund- 
ance, and large clean sleeping apartments. We go about where 
we please over the place, and are not bound down by strict rules 
as the others are. I go on duty at five o'clock p. m. and off at five 
A. m. The work is about the same as in any drug store, filling 
prescriptions, etc. and is pretty lively up to about ten o'clock. 
At seven p. m. I take a medicine case and go the rounds with the 
night physician to see the ones over in the main building who 
have become sick during the day. 

The doctor goes to bed about ten o'clock and from then on 
during the night I prescribe for the patients myself and go out 
and attend calls that come in. If I find any one seriously ill 
I have them brought to the hospital and attended to by the doctor. 
I never imagined human life was held as cheap as it is here. The 
men are regarded as animals without soul or feeling. They carry 
on all kinds of work here; there are foundries and all kinds of manu- 
facturing done, and everybody works and works twice as hard as 
men in the same employment outside do. They work thirteen 
hours a day and each man must do a certain amount or be punished. 
Some few strong ones stand the work, but it is simply slow death 
to the majority. If a man gets sick and can't work they take him 
into a cellar and turn a powerful stream of water on him from a 
hose that knocks the breath out of him. Then a doctor revives 
him and they hang him up by his hands with his feet off the floor 

loo 



0. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 

for an hour or two. This generally makes him go to work again, 
and when he gives out and can't stand up they bring him on a 
stretcher to the hospital to get well or die as the case may be. 

The hospital wards have from one hundred to two hundred 
patients in them all the time. They have all kinds of diseases — 
at present typhus fever and measles are the fashion. Consump- 
tion here is more common than bad colds are at home. There 
are about thirty hopeless cases of it in the hospital just now and 
nearly all the nurses and attendants are contracting it. There 
are hundreds of other cases of it among the men who are working 
in the shops and foundries. Twice a day they have a sick call 
at the hospital, and from two hundred to three hundred men are 
marched in each day suffering from various disorders. They 
march in single file past the doctor and he prescribes for each 
one "on the fly." The procession passes the drug counter and 
the medicines are handed out to each one as they march without 
stopping the line. 

I have tried to reconcile myself to remaining here for a time, 
but am about at the end of my endurance. There is absolutely 
not one thing in life at present or in prospect that makes it of 
value. I have decided to wait until the New Orleans court de- 
cides the appeal, provided it is heard within a reasonable time, 
and see what chance there comes out of it. 

I can stand any kind of hardships or privations on the outside, 
but I am utterly unable to continue the life I lead here. I know 
all the arguments that could be advanced as to why I should en- 
dure it, but I have reached the limit of endurance. It will be 
better for every one else and a thousand times better for me to 
end the trouble instead of dragging it out longer. 

July 8, 1898. 
Dear Mrs. R. 

I have little to say about myself, except that as far as physical 
comfort goes I am as well situated as any one here. I attend to 
my business (that of night druggist) and no one interferes with me, 
as the doctor leaves everything in my hands at night. I attend 
156 






THE SHADOWED YEARS 

to sick calls and administer whatever I think proper unless it 
happens to be a severe case and then I wake up the doctor. I 
am treated with plentiful consideration by all the officials, have a 
large, airy, clean sleeping room and the range of the whole place, 
and big, well kept yard full of trees, flowers, and grass. The 
hospital here is a fine new building, fully as large as the City Hall 
in Austin, and the office and drug store is as fine and up-to-date 
as a first class hotel. I have my desk and office chair inside the 
drug store railing, gas lights, all kinds of books, the latest novels, 
etc. brought in every day or two, three or four daily papers, and 
good meals, sent down the dumb waiter from the kitchen at ten 
o'clock and three p. m. There are five w T ards in the hospital and 
they generally have from fifty to two hundred patients in them all 
the time. 

The guards bring in men who are sick at all hours of the night 
to the hospital which is detached some one hundred yards from the 
main buildings. I have gotten quite expert at practicing medicine. 
It's a melancholy place, however — misery and death and all kinds 
of suffering around one all the time. We sometimes have a death 
every night for a week or so. Very little time is wasted on such an 
occasion. One of the nurses will come from a ward and say — 
"Well, So and So has croaked." Ten minutes later they tramp 
out with So and So on a stretcher and take him to the dead house. 
If he has no friends to claim him — which is generally the case — 
the next day the doctors have a dissecting bee and that ends it. 
Suicides are as common as picnics here. Every few nights the 
doctor and I have to strike out at a trot to see some unfortunate 
who has tried to get rid of his troubles. They cut their throats 
and hang themselves and stop up their cells and turn the gas on 
and try all kinds of ways. Most of them plan it well enough to 
succeed. Night before last a professional pugilist went crazy in 
his cell and the doctor and I, of course, were sent for. The man 
was in good training and it took eight of us to tie him. Seven 
held him down while the doctor climbed on top and got his hypo- 
dermic syringe into him. These little things are our only amuse- 
ments. I often get as blue as any one can get and I feel as thor- 

157 



O. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 

oughly miserable as it is possible to feel, but I consider that 
ray future efforts belong to others and I have no right to give way 
to my own troubles and feelings. 

Hello, Margaret: 

Don't you remember me? I'm a Brownie, and my name is 
Aldibirontiphostiphornikophokos. If you see a star shoot and 
say my name seventeen times before it goes out, you will find a 
diamond ring in the track of the first blue cow's foot you see go 
down the road in a snowstorm while the red roses are blooming 
on the tomato vines. Try it some time. I know all about Anna 
and Arthur Dudley, but they don't see me. I was riding by on 
a squirrel the other day and saw you and Arthur Dudley give 
some fruit to some trainmen. Anna wouldn't come out. Well 
good-bye, I've got to take a ride on a grasshopper. I'll just sign 
my first letter— "A". 

July 8, 1898. 
My Dear Margaret : 

You don't know how glad I was to get your nice little letter 
to-day. I am so sorry I couldn't come to tell you good-bye when 
I left Austin. You know I would have done so if I could have. 

Well, I think it's a shame some men folks have to go away from 
home to work and stay away so long — don't you? But I tell you 
what's a fact. When I come home next time I'm going to stay 
there. You bet your boots I'm getting tired of staying away so 
long. 

I'm so glad you and Munny are going to Nashville. I know 
you'll have a fine ride on the cars and a good time when you get 
to Uncle Bud's. Now you must have just the finest time you can 
with Anna and the boys and tumble around in the woods and go 
fishing and have lots of fun. Now, Margaret, don't you worry 
any about me, for I'm well and fat as a pig and I'll have to be away 
from home a while yet and while I'm away you can just run up to 
Nashville and see the folks there. 
158 



THE SHADOWED YEARS 

And not long after you come back home I'll be ready to come 
And I won't ever have to leave again. 

So you be just as happy as you can, and it won't be long till 
we'll be reading Uncle Remus again of nights. 

I'll see if I can find another one of Uncle Remus's books when I 
come back. You didn't tell me in your letter about your going 
to Nashville. When you get there you must write me a long 
letter and tell me what you saw on the cars and how you like 
Uncle Bud's stock farm. 

When you get there I'll write you a letter every week, for you 
will be much nearer to the town I am in than Austin is. 

I do hope you will have a nice visit and a good time. Look out 
pretty soon for another letter from me. 

I think about you every day and wonder what you are doing. 
Well, I will see you again before very long. 

Your loving 

Papa. 

August 16, 1898. 
My Dear Margaret: 

I got your letter yesterday, and was mighty glad to hear from 
you. I think you must have forgotten where you were when you 
wrote it, for you wrote "Austin, Texas" at the top of it. Did you 
forget you had gone to Tennessee? 

The reason why I have not written you a letter in so long is 
that I didn't know the name of the postoffice where you and 
Munny were going until I got her letter and yours yesterday. 
Now that I know how to write I will write you a letter every 
Sunday and you will know just when you are going to get one 
every week. Are you having a nice time at Aunt Lilly's? 

Munny tells me you are fat and sassy and I am glad to hear it. 
You always said you wanted to be on a farm. You must write 
and tell me next time what kind of times you have and what you 
do to have fun. 

I'd have liked to see the two fish you caught. Guess they wore 
most as long as your little finger, weren't they? You must make 

loO 



O. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 

Munny keep you up there till the hot weather is over before you 
go back to Austin. I want you to have as good times as you can, 
and get well and strong and big but don't get as big as Munny 
because I'm afraid you'd lick me when I come home. 

Did you find Dudley and Arthur much bigger than they were 
when they were in Austin? I guess Anna is almost grown now — 
or thinks she is — which amounts to about the same thing. 

April 5, 1899. 
Dear Mrs. R. : 

One thing I am sorry for is that we are about to lose Dr. Reinert, 
our night physician. He has been my best friend and is a thor- 
oughly good man in every way. He will resign his place in about 
a month to accept a better position as Police Surgeon. You can 
still address in his care until May 1st, and in the meantime I will 
make other arrangements. I believe, though, that I will be able 
to hold my own after he leaves, as I have the confidence and good 
will of all the officers. Still we never can tell here, as everything 
is run on political and financial lines. Of course, all the easy 
positions are greatly in demand, and every variety of wire-pulling 
and scheming is used to secure them. As much as a thousand 
dollars have been offered by men here for such places as the one 
I hold, and as I hold mine simply on my own merits I have to be 
on the lookout all the time against undermining. 

I have abundant leisure time at night and I have been putting 
it to best advantage studying and accumulating manuscript 
to use later. 

February 14, 1900. 
Dear Margaret : 

It has been quite a long time since I heard from you. I got a 
letter from you in the last century, and a letter once every hundred 
years is not very often. I have been waiting from day to day, 
putting off writing to you, as I have been expecting to have 
something to send you, but it hasn't come yet, and I thought 
I would write anyhow. 
160 



THE SHADOWED YEARS 

I am pretty certain I will have it in three or four days, and 
then I will write to you again and send it to you. 

I hope your watch runs all right. When you write again be 
sure and look at it and tell me what time it is, so I won't have 
to get up and look at the clock. 

With much love, 

Papa. 

May 17, 1900. 
Dear Margaret: 

It has been so long since I heard from you that I'm getting 
real anxious to know what is the matter. Whenever you don't 
answer my letters I am afraid you are sick, so please write right 
away when you get this. Tell me something about Pittsburg and 
what you have seen of it. Have they any nice parks where you 
can go or is it all made of houses and bricks? I send you twenty 
nickels to spend for anything you want. 

Now, if you will write me a nice letter real soon I will promise 
to answer it the same day and put another dollar in it. I am very 
well and so anxious to be with you again, which I hope won't be 
very long now. 

With much love, as ever 

Papa. 

October 1, 1900. 
Dear Margaret: 

I got your very nice, long letter a good many days ago. It 
didn't come straight to me, but went to a wrong address first. I 
was very glad indeed to hear from you, and very, very sorry to 
learn of your getting your finger so badly hurt. I don't think 
you were to blame at all, as you couldn't know just how that 
villainous old "hoss" was going to bite. I do hope that it will 
heal up nicely and leave your finger strong. I am learning to 
play the mandolin, and we must get you a guitar, and we will 
learn a lot of duets together when I come home, which will certainly 
not be later than next summer, and maybe earlier. 

I suppose you have started to school again some time ago. I 

101 



O. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 

hope you like to go, and don't have to study too hard. When one 
grows up, a thing they never regret is that they went to school 
long enough to learn all they could. It makes everything easier 
for them, and if they like books and study they can always con- 
tent and amuse themselves that way even if other people are cross 
and tiresome, and the world doesn't go to suit them. 

You mustn't think that I've forgotten somebody's birthday. I 
couldn't find just the thing I wanted to send, but I know where 
it can be had, and it will reach you in a few days. So, when it 
comes you'll know it is for a birthday remembrance. 

I think you write the prettiest hand of any little girl (or big one, 
either) I ever knew. The letters you make are as even and regular 
as printed ones. The next time you write, tell me how far you 
have to go to school and whether you go alone or not. 

I am busy all the time writing for the papers and magazines all 
over the country, so I don't have a chance to come home, but I'm 
going to try to come this winter. If I don't I will by summer sure, 
and then you'll have somebody to boss and make trot around with 
you. 

Write me a letter whenever you have some time to spare, for I 
am always glad and anxious to hear from you. Be careful when 
you are on the streets not to feed shucks to strange dogs, or pat 
snakes on the head or shake hands with cats you haven't been 
introduced to, or stroke the noses of electric car horses. 

Hoping you are well and your finger is getting all right, I am, 
with much love, as ever, 

Papa. 

November 5, 1900. 
Dear Mrs. R. : 

I send you an Outlook by this mail with a little story* of mine in it. 
I am much better situated now for work and am going to put in lots 
of time i n writing this winter. 

♦This was "Georgia's Ruling," published in the Outlook of June 30, 1900. It is an idyl of 
devotion, the devotion of a father to the memory of his little daughter. It was so intimately 
related to Dick Hall and so closely concerned with the Austin land office that O. Henry for- 
bade its publication in book form. It may be found in "Whirligigs," published a few months 
after O. Henry's death. 

162 



THE SHADOWED YEARS 

About two weeks ago I was given what I consider the best 
position connected with this place. I am now in the steward's 
office keeping books, and am very comfortably situated. The 
office is entirely outside and separate from the rest of the institu- 
tion. It is on the same street, but quite a distance away. I am 
about as near free as possible. I don't have to go near the other 
buildings except sometimes when I have business with some of the 
departments inside. I sleep outside at the office and am abso- 
lutely without supervision of any kind. I go in and out as I 
please. At night I take walks on the streets or go down to the 
river and walk along the paths there. The steward's office is a 
two-story building containing general stores and provisions. 
There are two handsomely furnished office rooms with up-to-date 
fixtures — natural gas, electric lights, 'phones, etc. I have a big 
fine desk with worlds of stationery and everything I need. We 
have a fine cook out here and set a table as good as a good hotel. 
The steward and the storekeeper — very agreeable gentlemen both 
of them — leave about four p. m. and I am my own boss till next 
morning. In fact, I have my duties and attend to them, and am 
much more independent than an employer would be. I take my 
hat and go out on the street whenever I please. I have a good 
wire cot which I rig up in the office at night, and altogether no 
one could ask for anything better under the circumstances. 



Dear Margaret : 

Here are two or three more pictures, but they are not very good. 
Munny says you are learning very fast at school. I'm sure you're 
going to be a very smart girl, and I guess I'd better study a lot 
more myself or you will know more than I will. I was reading 
to-day about a cat a lady had that was about the smartest cat I 
ever heard of. One day the cat was asleep and woke up. He 
couldn't see his mistress, so he ran to a bandbox where she kept 
the hat she wore when she went out, and knocked the top off to 
see if it was there. When he found it was there he seemed to be 
contented and lay down and went to sleep again. Wasn't that 

163 



O. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 

pretty bright for a cat? Do you think Nig would do anything 
that smart? 

You must plant some seeds and have them growing so you can 
water them as soon as it gets warm enough. Well, I'll write you 
another letter in a day or two. So good-bye till then. 

Your loving 

Papa. 

My Dear Margaret: 

I ought to have answered your last letter sooner, but I haven't 
had a chance. It's getting mighty cool now. It won't be long 
before persimmons are ripe in Tennessee. I don't think you ever 
ate any persimmons, did you? I think persimmon pudden (not 
pudding) is better than cantaloupe or watermelon either. If you 
stay until they get ripe you must get somebody to make you one. 

If it snows while you are there you must try some fried snow- 
balls, too. They are mighty good with Jack Frost gravy. 

You must see how big and fat you can get before you go back to 
Austin. 

When I come home I want to find you big and strong enough to 
pull me all about town on a sled when we have a snow storm. 
Won't that be nice? I just thought I'd write this little letter in a 
hurry so the postman would get it and when I'm in a hurry I 
never can think of anything to write about. You and Munny 
must have a good time, and keep a good lookout and don't let 
tramps or yellowjackets catch you. I'll try to write something 
better next time. Write soon. 

Your loving 

Papa. 

November 12. 
My Dear Margaret: 

Did you ever have a pain right in the middle of your back be- 
tween your shoulders? Well, I did just then when I wrote your 
name, and I had to stop a while and grunt and twist around in my 
chair before I could write any more. Guess I must have caught 
164 



THE SHADOWED YEARS 

cold. I haven't had a letter from you in a long time. You must 
stir Munny up every week or two and make her send me your 
letter. I guess you'd rather ride the pony than write about him, 
wouldn't you? But you know I'm always so glad to get a letter 
from you even if it's only a teentsy weentsy one, so I'll know you 
are well and what you are doing. 

You don't want to go to work and forget your old Pop just 
because you don't see much of him just now, for he'll come in 
mighty handy some day to read Uncle Remus to you again and 
make kites that a cyclone wouldn't raise off the ground. So write 
soon. 

With love as ever, 

Papa. 

My Dear Margaret : 

I ought to have answered your letter some time ago, but you 
know how lazy I am. I'm very glad to hear you are having a 
good time, and I wish I was with you to help you have fun. I 
read in the paper that it is colder in Austin than it has been in 
many years, and they've had lots of snow there too. Do you 
remember the big snow we had there once? I guess everybody 
can get snow this winter to fry. Why don't you send me some 
fried snow in a letter? Do you like Tennessee as well as you did 
Texas? Tell me next time you write. Well, old Christmas is 
about to come round again. I wish I could come and light up 
the candles on the Christmas tree like we used to. I wouldn't 
be surprised if you haven't gotten bigger than I am by now, and 
when I come back and don't want to read Uncle Remus of nights, 
you can get a stick and make me do it. I saw some new Uncle 
Remus books a few days ago and when I come back I'll bring a 
new one, and you'll say "thankydoo, thankydoo." I'm getting 
mighty anxious to see you again, and for us to have some more 
fun like we used to. I guess it won't be much longer now till I 
do, and I want to hear you tell all about what times you've had. 
I'll bet you haven't learned to button your own dress in the back 
yet, have you? 

165 



r 

O. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 

I hope you'll have a jolly Christmas and lots of fun — Geeminy ! 
don't I wish I could eat Christmas dinner with you ! Well, I hope 
it won't be long till we all get home again. Write soon and don't 
forget your loving, 

Papa. 

My Dear Margaret: 

Here it is summertime, and the bees are blooming and the flowers 
are singing and the birds making honey, and we haven't been 
fishing yet. Well, there's only one more month till July, and then 
we'll go, and no mistake. I thought you would write and tell 
me about the high water around Pittsburg some time ago, and 
whether it came up to where you live, or not. And I haven't 
heard a thing about Easter, and about the rabbits' eggs — but I 
suppose you have learned by this time that eggs grow on egg plants 
and are not laid by rabbits. 

I would like very much to hear from you oftener; it has been 
more than a month since you wrote. Write soon and tell me how 
you are, and when school will be out, for we want plenty of holi- 
days in July so we can have a good time. I am going to send you 
something nice the last of this week. What do you guess it will 
be? 

Lovingly, 

Papa. 

When O. Henry passed out of the prison walls of 
Columbus, he was a changed man. Something of the 
old buoyancy and waggishness had gone, never to 
return. He was never again to content himself with 
random squibs or jests contributed to newspapers or 
magazines. Creation had taken the place of mere 
scintillation. Observation was to be more and more 
fused with reflection. He was to work from the centre 
166 



THE SHADOWED YEARS 

out rather than from the circumference in. The quest 
of "What's around the corner" was to be as determined 
as before but it was to be tempered with a consciousness 
of the under-side of things. The hand that held the 
pen had known a solemnizing ministry and the eye 
that guided it had looked upon scenes that could not be 
expunged from memory. 

The old life was to be shut out. He had written 
to none of his earlier friends while in prison and he 
hoped they would never know. The work that he had 
elected to do could be done in silence and separation and, 
so far as in him lay, he would start life over again once 
more. Explanations would be useless. He had his 
secret and he determined to keep it. He had been 
caught in the web of things but he had another to live 
for and hope was strong and confidence still stronger 
within him. If a sense of pervading romance had 
buoyed him before his days of testing, it had not de- 
serted him when he passed within the shadows. It had 
been not only his pillar of cloud by day but his pillar of 
fire by night. 

There are men, says O. Henry, in one of his vivid 
characterizations, to whom life is "a reversible coat, 
seamy on both sides." His had been seamy on only 
one side; the inner side was still intact. The dream and 
the vision had remained with him. He had suffered 
much, but the texture of life still seemed sound to him. 

167 



O. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 

There was no sense of disillusionment. No friend had 
failed him; no friend ever failed him. So far from 
losing interest in life, he was rather re-dedicated to it. 

Nothing so testifies to the innate nobleness of O. 
Henry's nature as the utter absence of bitterness in 
his disposition after the three years in Columbus. 
These years had done their work, but it was constructive, 
not destructive. His charity was now as boundless as 
the air and his sympathy with suffering, especially when 
the sufferer was seemingly down and out, as prompt and 
instinctive as the glance of the eye. He was talking to 
a friend once on the streets of New York when a beggar 
approached and asked for help. 0. Henry took a coin 
from his pocket, shielded it from the view of his friend, 
and slipped it into the beggar's hand, saying, "Here's a 
dollar. Don't bother us any more." The man walked 
a few steps away, examined the coin, and seemed un- 
certain what to do. Then he came slowly back. 
"Mister," he said, "you were good to me and I don't 
want to take advantage of you. You said this was a 
dollar. It's a twenty-dollar gold piece." O. Henry 
turned upon him indignantly: "Don't you think I 
know what a dollar is? I told you not to come back. 
Get along!" He then continued his conversation, but 
was plainly mortified lest his friend should have de- 
tected his ruse. A woman whom he had helped over 
many rough places in New York said: "His compassion 
168 ~ 



THE SHADOWED YEARS 

for suffering was infinite. He used to say ' I know how it 
is.' That was his gift. He had a genius for friendship." 
The first step in putting the past irrevocably behind 
him was to write under an assumed name. The pen- 
name of 0. Henry may have been thought of while he 
was in New Orleans ; it may have been suggested by the 
names found in a New Orleans daily, the Times- 
Democrat or the Picayune. 0. Henry, I believe, is 
reported to have said as much. But the evidence is 
that he did not adopt and use the name until he found 
himself in prison. When the S. S. l^IcClure Company 
wrote to him about "The Miracle of Lava Canon" 
(see page 124), he had been out of New Orleans nearly 
a year and was never to see the city again, but he was 
addressed as W. S. Porter and the story was published 
as W. S. Porter's. On April 25, 1898, the day on which 
he arrived in Columbus, the S. S. McClure Company 
wrote to him in Austin, addressing him as Sydney 
Porter. It was his first change of signature and was 
adopted in the month between his conviction and his 
commitment. It was also the name to be engraved 
upon his visiting cards in New York. But after reach- 
ing Columbus, not before, he took the pen-name O. 
Henry and kept it to the end.* 

* So far as I can discover, only three stories were signed Sydney Porter and these are not 
reproduced in O. Henry's collected works. They were "The Cactus" and "Round the Circle." 
both published in Everybody's for October, 1902, and "Hearts and Hands," published in Every- 
body's for December of the same year. Other names occasionally signed were Olivier Henry, 
S. H. Peters, James L. Bliss (once), T. B. Dowd, and Howard Clark. 

169 



0. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 

One of the most interesting odds and ends found 
among O. Henry's belongings is a small notebook used 
by him in prison. In it he jotted down the names of his 
stories and the magazines to which he sent them. It is 
not complete, the first date being October 1, 1900. It 
contains, therefore, no mention of "Whistling Dick's 
Christmas Stocking," which appeared in McClure's 
Magazine for December, 1899, or of " Georgia's Ruling," 
to which he alludes in the letter to Mrs. I^oach (see 
page 162). Of the stories now grouped into books, 
these two were the first written. The stories listed in 
the prison notebook and now republished in book form 
are, in chronological order, "An Afternoon Miracle,"* 
"Money Maze," "No Story," "A Fog in Santone," 
"A Blackjack Bargainer," "The Enchanted Kiss," 
"Hygeia at the Solito," "Rouge et Noir," "The Du- 
plicity of Hargraves," and "The Marionettes." 

These twelve stories, three of which were picked as 
among O. Henry's best in the plebiscite held by the 
Bookman, June, 1914, show a range of imagination, a 
directness of style, and a deftness of craftsmanship to 
which little was to be added. In the silent watches of 
the night, when the only sound heard was "the occa- 
sional sigh or groan from the beds which were stretched 
before him in the hospital ward or the tramp of the 
passing guard," O. Henry had come into his own. He 

♦This is a re-shaping of his first story, "The Miracle of Lava Canon." See page 124. 

170 



THE SHADOWED YEARS 

had passed from journalism to literature. He had 
turned a stumbling-block into a stepping-stone. And 
his mother's graduating essay, "The Influence of Mis- 
fortune on the Gifted/' written a half century before, 
had received its strangest and most striking fulfilment. 



171 



.) 



CHAPTER SEVEN 

FINDING HIMSELF IN NEW YORK 

ON JULY 24, 1901, the day of his liberation, O. Henry 
went to Pittsburg where his daughter and her grand- 
parents were then living. Mr. and Mrs. Roach had 
moved from Austin immediately after the trial. Mr. 
Roach was now the manager of the Iron Front Hotel in 
Pittsburg, and here O. Henry improvised an office in 
which he secluded himself and wrote almost continu- 
ously. The stories that had issued from the prison in 
Columbus had gone first to New Orleans and had been 
re-mailed there. Now the stories were sent direct 
from Pittsburg. 

The call or rather invitation to New York came in 
the spring of 1902. Mr. Gilman Hall, associate editor 
of Everybody's Magazine but at that time associate 
editor of Ainslee's, had written an appreciative letter to 
O. Henry before the prison doors had opened. The 
letter was directed, of course, to New Orleans where 
the stories were thought to originate. "The stories that 
he submitted to Duffy and myself," said Mr. Hall, 
"both from New Orleans and Pittsburg were so excel- 
lent that at least the first seven out of eight were imme- 
172 



FINDING HIMSELF IN NEW YORK 

diately accepted. For these first stories we gave him 
probably seventy-five dollars each." O. Henry did not 
go to New York under contract. He went because 
Mr. Hall, quick to discover merit and unhappy till he 
has extended a helping hand, urged him to come. 

New York needed him and he needed New York. 
How great the need was on both sides it is not likely that 
Mr. Hall or Mr. Duffy or O. Henry himself knew. 
During the eight years of his stay, however, 0. Henry 
was to get closer to the inner life of the great city and 
to succeed better in giving it a voice than any one else 
had done. To 0. Henry this last quest of "What's 
around the corner," confined now to a city that was a 
world within itself, was to be his supreme inspiration. 
Very soon he found that he could not work outside of 
New York. "I could look at these mountains a hun- 
dred years," he said to Mrs. Porter in Asheville, "and 
never get an idea, but just one block downtown and I 
catch a sentence, see something in a face — and I've got 
my story." If ever in American literature the place 
and the man met, they met when 0. Henry strolled for 
the first time along the streets of New York. 

"Of the writing men and women of the newer gene- 
ration," says Mr. Arthur Bartlett Maurice,* "the men 
and women whose trails are the subject of these papers, 
there are many who have staked claims to certain New 

*See "The New York of the Novelists" (the Bookman, New York, October, 1915). 

173 



O. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 

York streets or quarters. There has been but one 
conqueror of Alexander-like ambitions, that is, of 
course, the late O. Henry, and Sydney Porter's name 
will naturally appear again and again in these and in 
ensuing papers. To north, east, south, and west, 
stretch his trails; to north, east, south, and west, he 
wandered like a modern Haroun al Raschid. And like a 
conqueror he rechristened the city to suit his whimsical 
humour. At one moment it is his 'Little Old Bagdad- 
on-the-Subway ' ; at another, 'The City of Too Many 
Caliphs'; at another, ' Noisy ville-on-the-Hudson ' ; or, 
6 Wolf ville-on-the-Sub way ' ; or, ' The City of Chameleon 
Changes.'" 

The acceptance of the invitation to come to New 
York without a definite engagement is evidence that 
O. Henry had at last gained confidence in himself as a 
writer. This confidence was a fruit of the years spent 
in Columbus. Without faith in himself no power of 
persuasion could, I think, have induced him to launch 
himself in a city where he had not only no assured posi- 
tion but no friends or acquaintances. Like Childe 
Roland's acceptance of the challenge on the occasion 
of his memorable first visit to the Dark Tower, O. 
Henry's acceptance of the invitation to come to New 
York was in itself the pledge of ultimate victory. It is 
certain that he took with him to New York short story 
material not yet worked up, but that he had any definite 
174 



FINDING HIMSELF IN NEW YORK 

plan of publication, any particular plots that could be 
more easily completed in the more favourable atmos- 
phere of a great city, is not likely. It is more probable 
that the desire to get into the game and the conscious- 
ness that he could play it now or never, if given a chance, 
were the ruling forces in the decision. The passion for 
self-expression which began in his earliest youth had 
grown with every later experience, and there was now 
added the determination, come what might, to give his 
daughter the best education possible. The road lay 
through the short story with New York as his workshop. 
Nobody except the family trio in Pittsburg and the 
editors and publishers of Ainslees Magazine knew that 
O. Henry was going to New York. He had spent a day 
or two in the city before he called at Duane and William 
streets to make himself known. "As happens in these 
matters," writes Mr. Richard Duffy,* "whatever mind 
picture Gilman Hall or I had formed of him from his 
letters, his handwriting, his stories, vanished before the 
impression of the actual man. To meet him for the 
first time you felt his most notable quality to be reti- 
cence, not a reticence of social timidity, but a reticence 
of deliberateness. If you also were observing, you would 
soon understand that his reticence proceeded from the 
fact that civilly yet masterfully he was taking in every 
item of the 'y° u ' being presented to him to the accom- 



* See the Bookman, New York, October, 1913. 

175 



O. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 

paniment of convention's phrases and ideas, together 
with the 'y° u ' behind this presentation. It was be- 
cause he was able thus to assemble and sift all the multi- 
farious elements of a personality with sleight-of-hand 
swiftness that you find him characterising a person or a 
neighbourhood in a sentence or two ; and once I heard him 
characterise a list of editors he knew each in a phrase." 

No one in New York came to know him better or felt 
a warmer affection for him than Mr. Gilman Hall. 
"I was sure," said Mr. Hall, "that he had a past, 
though he did not tell me of it and I did not inquire into 
it. It was not till after his death that I learned of the 
years spent in Columbus. I used to notice, however, 
that whenever we entered a restaurant or other public 
place together he would glance quickly around him as if 
expecting an attack. This did not last long, however. 
I thought that he had perhaps killed some one in a 
ranch fight, for he told me that he had lived on a ranch 
in Texas. This inference was strengthened by finding 
that he was a crack shot with a pistol, being very fond 
of shooting-galleries as well as of bowling alleys. But 
when I found that he did not carry a pistol, I began to 
doubt the correctness of my theory." 

Mr. Duffy relates that he found O. Henry a man with 
whom you could sit for a long time and feel no necessity 
for talking, though a passerby would often evoke from 
him a remark that later reappeared as the basis of a 
176 



FINDING HIMSELF IN NEW YORK 

story. "Any one who endeavoured to question him 
about himself," continues Mr. Duffy, "would learn 
very little, especially if he felt he was being examined as 
a 'literary ' exhibit; although when he was in the humour 
he would give you glimpses of his life in Greensboro and 
on the ranch to which he had gone as a young man, 
because he had friends there and because he was said 
to be delicate in the chest. He would never, however, 
tell you 'the story of his life' as the saying is, but merely 
let you see some one or some happening in those days 
gone by that might fit in well with the present moment, 
for always he lived emphatically in the present, not 
looking back to yesterday, not very far ahead toward 
to-morrow. For instance, I first heard of a doctor in 
Greensboro, who was his uncle, I believe, and something 
of a character to O. Henry at least, when I inquired 
about a story he was writing, — how it was coming along. 
Then he told me of the doctor who, when asked about 
any of his patients, how they, Mr. Soandso or Mrs. 
Soandso, were getting along, would invariably reply 
with omniscience: 'Oh, Mrs. Soandso is progressing!' 
But as O. Henry said: 'He never explained which way 
the patient was progressing, toward better or worse/ 
It was here in Greensboro naturally that he began to 
have an interest in books, and I recall among those he 
used to mention as having read at the time, that one 
night he spoke to me of a copybook of poems written 

177 



/ 

/ 



O. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 

by his mother. He spoke with shy reverence about the 
poems, which he no doubt remembered, but he did not 
speak of them particularly. They were merely poems, 
written by her in her own hand, and as a young man 
they had come to him." 

O. Henry could not be prevailed upon to meet a man 
simply because the man was a celebrity nor, when he 
himself became a celebrity, would he permit himself to 
be visited as such if he could help it. There was never 
a moment of his stay in New York when the four million 
were not more interesting to him than the four hundred. 
One self -protective device that stood him in good stead 
was a sort of pan-American dialect which he adopted 
on such occasions and which served as a deterrent to 
future offenders. Thus a woman who had written to 
him about his stories and who insisted on bringing a 
friend to meet the great man said to him afterward: 
"You mortified me nearly to death, you talked so 
ungrammatical." Another method of evasion was to 
drop into a perfectly serious vein of Artemus Ward 
rusticity. There was fun in it to those who understood, 
but it was meant for those who did not and could not 
understand and it had the desired effect. 

But with a congenial companion, O. Henry was more 
interesting than his stories. Almost all, however, who 
have written about him mention his barrier of initial 
reserve. Till this was penetrated — and he had to 
178 



FINDING HIMSELF IN NEW YORK 

penetrate it himself by sensing a potential friend in the 
casual acquaintance — there was no flow. "My first 
impression of O. Henry," writes Mrs. Wilson Woodrow, 
"and an impression which lasted during half the evening 
at least, was one of disappointment. This wonderful 
story teller struck me as stolid and imperturbable in ap- 
pearance and so unresponsive and reserved in manner 
that I had a miserable feeling that I was a failure as a 
guest, and nothing hurts a writer's vanity, a woman writ- 
er's anyway, so much as to have her work considered more 
interesting and attractive than herself. But presently 
Mr. Porter began to sparkle. He was unquestionably 
a great raconteur. I am sure that if his table-talk had 
ever been taken down in shorthand, it would have 
sounded very much like his written dialogue, only it 
was not circumscribed and curbed by the limits of the 
story and the necessity of keeping the narrative upper- 
most. 

"His wit was urban, sophisticated, individual; en- 
tirely free from tricks and the desire to secure effects. 
It was never mordant nor corrosive; it did not eat nor 
fester; it struck clean and swift and sure as a stroke of 
lightning. It was packed with world-knowledge, de- 
signed to delight the woman of thirty, not of twenty, and 
yet I never heard him tell a story even faintly risque. 
He was the most delightful of companions, thoughtful to 
a degree of one's comfort and enjoyment, and his wit 

179 



O. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 

never flagged; quite effortless, it bubbled up from an 
inexhaustible spring. Most brilliant talkers are quite 
conscious of their gift; they put it through all its paces s 
and you are expected to award the blue ribbon of appre- 
ciation. Not so O. Henry. He treated it as carelessly 
and casually as an extravagant and forgetful woman 
does her jewels. He was absolutely free from any pose, 
and he would tolerate none. He gave and he exacted 
always the most punctilious courtesy. But more, I 
think that his was one of the proudest spirits, so sensi- 
tive, too, that he protected himself from the crude and 
rude touch of the world in a triple-plated armour of 
mirth and formality." 

O. Henry's friends soon found that money went 
through his hands like water through a sieve. He 
simply could not keep it. His tips were often twice 
the amount of the bill. The view has been expressed 
more than once in print that 0. Henry was the victim 
while in New York of some sort of blackmail, that on no 
other theory could his constant pennilessness be ac- 
counted for. Those who knew him best, however, not 
only discredit the theory but find no reason to invoke it. 
Money was not squeezed from him — he gave it away, 
willingly, bounteously, gladly. "He would share his 
last dollar," writes Mrs. Porter, "with a fellow who 
came to him with a hard-luck story. He would give 
away the clothes he needed himself to a man poorer 
180 



FINDING HIMSELF IN NEW YORK 

than himself." He not only gave freely to any beggar 
or street waif or hobo that called upon him, says Mr. 
Hall, but as he showed them to the door he would ask 
them to call again. 

As penniless as he usually was, however, and as eager 
as he always was to know the feel of money in his pocket, 
you could not move him a hair's-breadth by dangling 
money before him. When publishers and periodicals 
that had turned a deaf ear to him in his struggling days 
sought to capitalize his fame by patronizing him he 
assumed their former rule. lie did the declining. Mr. 
Clarence L. Cullen narrates the following incident:* 



I was with him at the Twenty-sixth Street place one afternoon 
when a batch of mail was brought to him. One of the envelopes 
caught his eye. On the envelope was printed the name of one of 
the leading fiction publications in all the world, if not indeed the 
most important of them all. Many times during the years when 
he had been struggling for a foothold as a writer of short stories 
he had submitted his tales, including the best of them, to the 
editor of this publication. Always had they come back with the 
conventional printed slip. When he reached the topmost rung 
of the ladder he meticulously refrained from submitting anything 
to that particular publication, the writers for which comprised 
the leading ''names'* in the world of fiction. 

He ripped open this envelope which attracted his eye. There 
was a note and a check for $1,000. The note asked him briefly 
for something from his pen — anything — with that word under- 
scored — check for which was therewith enclosed. If the thousand 
dollars were not deemed sufficient, the note went on, he had only 



*The New York Sun, January 10, 1915. 

181 



0. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 

to name what sum he considered fair and the additional amount 
would be remitted to him. 

Porter, who probably was the least vainglorious writer of equal 
fame that ever lived, smiled a sort of cherubic smile as he passed 
the note over to me. When I had finished reading it, without 
comment, he, saying never a word, addressed an envelope to 
the editor of the publication, slipped the check into the envelope, 
stamped the envelope and went out into the hall and deposited 
it in the drop. Not a word passed between us about the offer. 



If 0. Henry's chief quest in New York was for 
"What's around the corner," his underlying purpose 
was to get first-hand material for short stories. Those 
who knew him most intimately believe that he never 
borrowed a plot. " Two things," says Mr. Hall, " stirred 
his indignation: a salacious story and the proffer of a 
plot. 'Don't you know better,' he would say, "than 
to offer me a plot?' : It was a necessity of his nature 
to manufacture his products from the raw material. 

Hints he took and from all conceivable sources. 
"Once at a dinner," says Mrs. Porter, "my brother told 
him of a man who hated the particular locality in which 
he lived so bitterly that he had gone far away, but at 
death his body had been brought back to the very spot 
he disliked for burial." 0. Henry was seen to jot down 
the idea on his cuff, but it does not reappear in any of 
his stories. Nor does an earlier incident of which he 
made at least a mental note at the time. A prisoner 
convicted of murder had been electrocuted in Columbus 
182 



FINDING HIMSELF IN NEW YORK 

and his last words were, "a curse upon the warden and 
all of his." Two weeks afterward the warden dropped 
dead. There was much talk and still more excitement 
about it among the prisoners. "As we were repeating 
this to Dr. Thomas," writes Mr. J. Clarence Sullivan, 
a reporter in Columbus, "O. Henry remarked: 'So you 
see a story to-day, do you?' and then, as usual, went 
from the room." It was the only time that the re- 
porters in Columbus had heard him utter a word, for 
he avoided them sedulously. But no story that he 
wrote, so far as I recall, turns upon the fulfilment of a 
malediction. O. Henry found his usable material in 
things seen rather than in things heard, or, if heard, they 
were heard at first-hand. 

The two incidents mentioned, moreover, illustrate 
human destiny rather than human character, and O. 
Henry's quest was for character manifestations. These 
he sought in the mass rather than in rare or abnormal 
displays. "When I first came to New York," he once 
said, "I spent a great deal of time knocking around the 
streets. I did things then that I wouldn't think of 
doing now. I used to walk at all hours of the day and 
night along the river fronts, through Hell's Kitchen, 
down the Bowery, dropping into all manner of places, 
and talking with any one who would hold converse with 
me. I never met any one but what I could learn some- 
thing from him; he's had some experience that I have 

183 



O. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 

not had; he sees the world from his own viewpoint. If 
you go at it in the right way, the chances are that you 
can extract something of value from him. But what- 
ever else you do, don't flash a pencil and notebook; 
either he will shut up or he will become a Hall Caine." 

There is evidently a rich vein of autobiography in the 
words with which he introduces "He Also Serves": 

If I could have a thousand years — just one little thousand years 
— more of life, I might, in that time, draw near enough to true 
Romance to touch the hem of her robe. 

Up from ships men come, and from waste places and forest 
and road and garret and cellar to maunder to me in strangely 
distributed words of the things they have seen and considered. 
The recording of their tales is no more than a matter of ears and 
fingers. There are only two fates I dread — deafness and writer's 
cramp. 

From what 0. Henry himself said of his way of 
getting story material and from what those closest to 
him in New York have reported, it would seem that 
two kinds of the city's population, two strata of its 
society, interested him most: those who were under a 
strain of some sort and those who were under a delusion. 
The first stirred his sympathy ; the second furnished him 
unending entertainment. Both are abundantly repre- 
sented in his stories, and both marked out trails that he 
followed eagerly to the end. 

Of his efforts to know the life of the working girls 
184 



FINDING HIMSELF IN NEW YORK 

of New York before writing about them, no one can 
speak more authoritatively than Miss Anne Partlan. 
"He told me," she writes,* "that the hand-to-mouth 
life that girls led in New York interested him and when 
he came to New York he looked me up. I used to have 
parties of my friends up to meet him and they never 
dreamed that this Mr. Porter, who fitted so well into 
our queer makeshift life, was a genius. He had abso- 
lutely no pose. 'The Unfinished Story' and 'The 
Third Ingredient' were taken straight from life. That 
is why there is never anything sordid in the little stories. 
We were poor enough in our dingy rooms but he saw the 
little pleasures and surprises that made life bearable 
to us." 

O. Henry's general manner at such times is thus 
described by Miss Partlan :f 

There was nothing of the brilliant wit about the great story 
writer when in the atmosphere of the shop-girl, clerk, or salesman. 
Instead, there was a quiet, sympathetic attitude and, at times, a 
pre-occupied manner as if their remarks and chatter reminded 
him of his old days of bondage in the country drug store, and the 
perpetual pillmaking which he was wont to describe with an 
amusing gesture, indicating the process of forming the cure-all. 

One evening a group of department store employees were having 
dinner with me. Among them were sales-girls, an associate 
buyer, and one of the office force. I asked O. Henry to join 
us so that he might catch the spirit of their daily life. He leavened 

*See the Writer, Boston, August, 1914. 

tSee "My Friend O. Henry," by Mr. Seth Moyle, pages 16-17. 

185 



0. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 

their shop-talk with genial, simple expressions of mirth as they 
told their tales of petty intrigue and strife for place amid the 
antagonism and pressure which pervades the atmosphere of 
every big organization. On leaving, he remarked to me: "If 
Henry James had gone to work in one of those places, he would 
have turned out the great American novel." 

On another occasion, the conversation turned to feather curl- 
ing, and he astonished me with his detailed knowledge of the 
craft. I asked him where he had learned so much about the 
work and he told me that in one of his first months in New York 
he was living in very humble lodgings and one evening found him 
without funds. He became so hungry that he could not finish 
the story on which he was working, and he walked up and down 
the landing between the rooms. The odor of cooking in one of 
the rooms increased his pangs, and he was beside himself when 
the door opened and a young girl said to him, "Have you had 
your supper? I've made hazlett stew and it's too much for me. 
It won't keep, so come and help me eat it."* 

He was grateful for the invitation and partook of the stew 
which, she told him, was made from the liver, kidneys, and heart 
of a calf. The girl was a feather curler and, during the meal, she 
explained her work and showed him the peculiar kind of dull blade 
which was used in it. A few days later he rapped at her door to 
ask her to a more substantial dinner, but he found that she had 
gone and left no address. 

Miss Partlan's father, an expert mechanic and an 
inventor of blacksmith's tools, asked O. Henry to 
accompany him to a meeting of master workmen. 
Miss Partlan continues: 



Speeches were made by masters of their craft, filled with refer- 
ences to "side hill plows," "bolt cutters," and "dressing chisels 

♦See "The Third Ingredient." 

186 











1 

...,.■— - 






\f** *mmm\ 






1 


TTTF 






I cl rr 






lam 






pfe 


Courtesy of 
Mr. Arthur BanUtt Maurice 




*^^^^[ 


THE CALEDONIA 









FINDING HIMSELF IN NEW YORK 

for rock use." The speeches referred to the most humane make of 
horse shoes, bar iron, toe calks, and hoof expanders. All of this 
fell on no more attentive ears than O. Henry's. A Scotchman 
presently arose and spoke on coach building. He told of a wood 
filling which he once made of the dust gathered from forges, 
mixed with a peculiar sort of clay. His enunciation was not clear 
and more than once O. Henry turned to me to ask me if I had 
caught the indistinct word. 

After the speeches came dancing of the Lancers and the Virginia 
Reel. O. Henry threw himself into the spirit like a boy. He danced 
and whistled and called out numbers, laughing heartily when 
in the maze of a wrong turn. No one there dreamed he was 
other than a fellow- working man. 

"Where do you keep shop, Mr. Porter?" asked the wife of a 
Missouri mechanic. 

"Mr. Porter is an author," I replied impulsively. 

"Well, I can do other things," he retorted with a note of de- 
fense as he continued, "I can rope cows, and I tried sheep raising 
once." 

But O. Henry's favourite coign of vantage was the 
restaurant. From his seat here, as from his broad 
window in the Caledonia on West Twenty-sixth Street, 
he gazed at his peep-show with a zest and interpretative 
insight that never flagged. Henry James says some- 
where: "It is an incident for a woman to stand up with 
her hand resting on a table and look at you in a certain 
way." O. Henry would have preferred that she sit 
down and order something. Restaurant tables mir- 
rored better for him than centre tables. The more 
individual hotels, restaurants, and cabarets of New 
York were ticketed and classified in his mind as men 

187 



0. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 

classify bugs or books. Their patrons he divided into 
two classes: those who knew and those who thought 
they knew, the real thing and those who would be con- 
sidered the real thing. If the "has-been's" had free 
access to O. Henry's pockets, the "would-be's" occupy 
almost an equal space in his pages; and among the 
"would-be's" the would-be Bohemians come first. 

"Thrice in a lifetime," says O. Henry, "may woman 
walk upon the clouds — once when she trippeth to the 
altar, once when she first enters Bohemian halls, the 
last when she marches back across her first garden with 
the dead hen of her neighbour." Miss Medora Martin 
had the Bohemian craze. She had come to New York 
from the village of Harmony, at the foot of the Green 
Mountains, Vermont. One rainy day Mr. Binkley, 
a fellow boarder, who was forty-nine and owned a fish- 
stall in a downtown market, had gone with her to " one 
of the most popular and widely patronized, jealously 
exclusive Bohemian resorts in the city." This is what 
took place:* 

Binkley had abandoned art and was prating of the unusual 
spring catch of shad. Miss Elise arranged the palette-and-maul- 
stick tie pin of Mr. Vandyke. A Philistine at some distant table 
was maundering volubly either about Jerome or Gerome. A 
famous actress was discoursing excitably about monogrammed 
hosiery. A hose clerk from a department store was loudly pro- 
claiming his opinions of the drama. A writer was abusing Dickens . 

♦"Extradited from Bohemia." 

188 



FINDING HIMSELF IN NEW YORK 

A magazine editor and a photographer were drinking a dry brand 
at a reserved table. A 36-25-42 young lady was saying to an 
eminent sculptor: "Fudge for your Prax Italy s! Bring one of 
your Venus Anno Dominis down to Cohen's and see how quick 
she'd be turned down for a cloak model. Back to the quarries 
with your Greeks and Dagos!" 
Thus went Bohemia. 

Scenes of this sort were dear to 0. Henry's heart. 
Not as a satirist but as a genial and immensely amused 
spectator he would sit night after night amid these 
children of illusion and find a satisfaction and stimula- 
tion in their behaviour that real Bohemia was powerless 
to furnish. "He watched them," writes an associate, 
"at their would-be Bohemian antics with his broad face 
creased with merriment, and I would that it had been 
possible to get phonographic records of his comments 
made in his extraordinarily low-pitched voice." 

Though 0. Henry's studies of New York life began 
as soon as he arrived in the city, it is not till 1904 that 
his stories are found to reflect in a marked degree his 
new environment. The intervening stories dealt with 
the West or Southwest and with Central or South 
America. One of these early Texas stories, "Madame 
Bo-Peep, of the Ranches," deserves more than a passing 
notice. It is a satisfying love story, redolent of happi- 
ness, of genuineness, of green prairies, temperate winds, 
and blue heavens, with just enough "centipedes and 
privations" to bring together at last two lives that 

189 



O. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 

New York had put apart. It is mentioned here be- 
cause it was to bring together two other lives that are of 
more concern to us just now than either Octavia Beau- 
pree or Teddy Westlake. 

The story was published in the Smart Set for June, 
1902. How many readers treasured it for the beauty 
of its simple plot and the balm of its wide and flowered 
spaces, I do not know. Among the letters written to 
O. Henry by admirers of his stories and preserved 
among his effects, there is none that mentions " Madame 
Bo-Peep." But one letter at least was written, and 
through it this story was to link the past and the present 
of O. Henry's life. It was to do more than any other 
one story to bridge the chasm between Will Porter of 
Greensboro and O. Henry of New York. It was ulti- 
mately to reveal to the friends of boyhood days that the 
youthful cartoonist of the "somnolent little Southern 
town" was now the short story interpreter of Bagdad- 
on-the-Subway. 

Mrs. Thaddeus Coleman, of Asheville, North Caro- 
lina, the mother of Miss Sallie Coleman, for whom O. 
Henry at the age of six had looted the magnolias (see 
page 67) , had been visiting in New York in the spring of 
1905. There she learned that O. Henry was Will 
Porter. The news brought to Miss Coleman not only 
surprise but eager delight and a train of long-slumbering 
memories. "In my desk," writes Mrs. Porter, "lay 
190 



FINDING HIMSELF IN NEW YORK 

* Madame Bo-Peep' and I loved her. I wrote 
O. Henry a note. 'If you are not Will Porter, don't 
bother to answer,' I said. He answered but does not 
seem to have bothered. 'Some day,' he wrote, 
'when you are not real busy, won't you sit down at 
your desk where you keep those antiquated stories and 
write to me? I'd be so pleased to hear something about 
what the years have done for you, and what you think 
about when the tree frogs begin to holler in the evening. ' ' 
A little later, when Miss Coleman had mentioned her 
ambition to write, came a more urgent letter: 

Now I'll tell you what to do. Kick the mountains over and 
pack a kimono and a lead-pencil in a suit-case and hurry to New 
York. Get a little studio three stories up with mission furniture 
and portieres, a guitar and a chafing-dish and laugh at fate and 
the gods. There are lots of lovely women here leading beautiful 
and happy lives in the midst of the greatest things in this hemi- 
sphere of art and music and literature on tiny little incomes. You 
meet the big people in every branch of art, you drink deep of the 
Pierian spring, you get the benefit of earth's best. — 

They were married in Asheville on November 27, 
1907. 

Another one of these early Western stories, "A Re- 
trieved Reformation," has probably had a wider vogue 
and caused its author to be pointed out more frequently 
in the restaurants and theatres of New Y^ork than any- 
thing else that he wrote, though it can hardly be classed 

191 



O. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 

among his best. The suggestion of the leading charac- 
ter came, doubtless, as Dr. Williard says (see page 151), 
from Jimmy Connors of the Columbus prison, and O. 
Henry may have sketched the story before leaving 
Columbus. It first appeared, however, in the Cosmo- 
politan of April, 1903, and was republished as "Mr. 
Valentine's New Profession" in the London Magazine 
of the following September. The phraseology is changed 
here and there in the English version and always for the 
worse, the plot and incidents remaining the same. 
On May 5, 1909, Curtis Brown and Massie, of London, 
wrote to O. Henry thanking him for "the [enclosed] 
authorization which we shall have pleasure in forward- 
ing to the French translator." The money received for 
the rights of French translation was donated by O. Henry 
to the Children's Country Holiday Fund of England. 

The French translator was Mr. A. Foulcher, a civil 
engineer now in the French army. This translation, 
says Mr. Foulcher, was, "without my knowledge or 
consent," promptly adapted and put upon the Paris 
stage. "Some five or six years ago," he writes,* 
"entering by chance the Vaudeville one fine evening, I 
had the pleasure of witnessing the performance of Mr. 
Valentine's feats, in which of course I found neither 
glory nor profits. Mr. Valentine had once more changed 
his name, but he was the same man and played the 

*The Dial, Chicago, May 11, 1916. 

192 



FINDING HIMSELF IN NEW YORK 

same trick on the safe." A French stage version, by 
the way, which, like Mr. Paul Armstrong's American 
stage version, was called "Alias Jimmy Valentine," 
was made by Mr. Maurice Tourneur,* who later filmed 
the play for the United States. As both of these ver- 
sions preserve the original name Valentine, it must have 
been still another French adaptation that Mr.Foulcher 
saw. In fact, the London stage version is known as 
"Jimmy Samson" and it was probably a re-adaptation 
of this version that Mr. Foulcher saw played in Paris. 

A Spanish translation of the English "Jimmy Sam- 
son" was made by Senor Alberti and acted at the Teatro 
Espanol in Madrid. O. Henry would hardly recognize 
his work in either its English or its Spanish form till 
the curtain goes up for the last time. "The author," 
writes a Spanish critic,f "has saved for this point his 
most effective stroke. A little girl has got shut up in 
the safe and is in peril of being asphyxiated. Samson, 
actuated by his good heart, hastens to open the safe 
and thus shows to the police who are following him that 
he really is the famous thief who is clever enough to 
open safes with a 'twist of the wrist.' The sacrifice 
might have cost him his happiness, since the daughter 
of the minister was in love with him, and also his 
liberty, since the police have at last discovered him; 
but the latter show themselves generous and the girl 

•See Harper's Weekly, April 29, 1916. 

\La Ilusiracion Espahola y Americana, Madrid, February 15, 1912. 

193 



O. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 

continues loving him in spite of all, and so all of us are 
satisfied." 

But Latin America had laid its spell on 0. Henry, 
and when "A Retrieved Reformation" was published 
the author was better known as a writer of Central 
and South American tales than of those dealing with 
the West or with New York. "He is threatening the 
supremacy of Mr. Richard Harding Davis in a field in 
which for several years the more widely known writer 
has been absolutely alone," wrote Mr. Stanhope 
Searles.* 0. Henry was urged to put his Latin Ameri- 
can stories together, to add others, and to publish the 
whole as a novel. This was the origin of "Cabbages 
and Kings," published late in 1904 and O. Henry's first 
book. It shows on every page a first-hand acquaint- 
ance with coastal Latin America. Mr. John Ewing, 
Minister to Honduras, writes from Tegucigalpa, De- 
cember 16, 1915: 

From conversations with people who have lived there and who 
have read "Cabbages and Kings," which I have in my library 
and which, by the way, is in constant demand, I understand that 
it is recognized and admitted to be true to life as conditions then 
existed in that section. 

Dr. B. E. Washburn, of the International Health 
Commission, writes from Port of Spain, Trinidad, 
Augusts, 1915: 



*The Bookman, New York, February, 1905. 

194 



FINDING HIMSELF IN NEW YORK 

During a recent journey through the West Indies and the 
Guianas I visited the booksellers and made inquiries as to which 
American authors were popular in each country. At St. Thomas, 
a Danish possession (where English is the language used, however) , 
I found the works of Longfellow and Poe for sale. At Dominica 
only Poe was represented in the small stock of books. The visit 
to the bookseller in Barbados was much more encouraging for 
here I found not only Poe and Longfellow, but also Bret Harte, 
Hawthorne, Mary Johnston, and 0. Henry. At Georgetown, in 
British Guiana, I also found 0. Henry, as well as many of the 
modern American novelists, especially Mark Twain, Booth Tark- 
ington, Opie Read, James Lane Allen, and Anna Katharine Green. 
At New Amsterdam, a city of 10,000 people in the far off province 
of Berbice, in Guiana, I found only Poe. When I asked the book- 
seller and "critique,' ' as he termed himself, about the works of 
O. Henry, he drew a long breath and said, "They are finished," 
meaning he had sold out. 



This particular " critique" had reviewed "Cabbages 
of ze King," but "with ze failure to recognize an in- 
terest." It was too literal, too much a bare recital of 
things as they are. "Seiior O. Henry is no storie 
escritor," he continued. "Anybody can see things 
happen an' write 'em down. You exclaim to me zat 
he is popular in ze America. Excuse me, an' a t'ousan' 
pardons ef I offend, but ze Americanos can be no judge 
of ze traits of ze imaginaccion. No matter ef ze 
Americanos, ze Ingles, or ze whole world entire like ze 
Senor Henry, he is no storie escritor. But ze books of 
him do sell!" 

The London Spectator noted in " Cabbages and Kings" 

195 



O. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 

"not only an individual point of view but a remarkable 
gift of literary expression." In fact, almost every 
characteristic that O. Henry was later to develop may 
here be found in embryo. There is the apparent turn- 
ing aside from the main narrative to indulge in a little 
philosophy, a sort of hide-and-seek played by the short 
story and its ancestor, the essay: see the passage on 
pages 53-54 about the "quaint old theory that man 
may have two souls — a peripheral one which serves 
ordinarily, and a central one which is stirred only at 
certain times, but then with activity and vigour." 

There is the portrayal of character by a few signifi- 
cant details: 

The fact that he did not know ten words of Spanish was no 
obstacle; a pulse could be felt and a fee collected without one being 
a linguist. Add to the description the facts that the doctor had 
a story to tell concerning the operation of trepanning which no 
listener had ever allowed him to conclude, and that he believed in 
brandy as a prophylactic; and the special points of interest pos- 
sessed by Dr. Gregg will have become exhausted. 

There is a beauty of style here and there, a tropic 
exuberance of colour, a wealth of leisurely description, 
that he never again equalled. Could a Honduran 
sunset be better photographed than in these words? — 

The mountains reached up their bulky shoulders to receive the 
level gallop of Apollo's homing steeds, the day died in the lagoons 
196 



FINDING HIMSELF IN NEW YORK 

and in the shadowed banana groves and in the mangrove swamps, 
where the great blue crabs were beginning to crawl to land for 
their nightly ramble. And it died, at last, upon the highest peaks. 
Then the brief twilight, ephemeral as the flight of a moth, came 
and went; the Southern Cross peeped with its topmost eye above 
a row of palms, and the fire-flies heralded with their torches the 
approach of soft-footed night. 

There is the trick of the diverted and diverting quo- 
tation: 

"Then," says I, "we'll export canned music to the Latins; but 
I'm mindful of Mr. Julius Caesar's account of 'em where he says: 
'Omnis Gallia in ires partes divisa est 9 ; which is the same as to say, 
'We will need all of our gall in devising means to tree them parties.' ' 

There is the pitting of city against city: 

"Yes, I judge that town was considerably on the quiet. I judge 
that after Gabriel quits blowing his horn, and the car starts, 
with Philadelphia swinging to the last strap, and Pine Gully, 
Arkansas, hanging onto the rear step, this town of Solitas will 
wake up and ask if anybody spoke. 

There is the art of hitting the target by seeming to 
aim above it, a sort of calculated exaggeration: 



"Twice before," says the consul, "I have cabled our govern- 
ment for a couple of gunboats to protect American citizens. 
The first time the Department sent me a pair of gum boots. 
The other time was when a man named Pease was going to be 
executed here. They referred that appeal to the Secretary of 
Agriculture." 

197 



O. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 

And there is the love of street scenes in New York 
which was to grow with him to his last moment: 

I get homesick sometimes, and I'd swap the entire perquisites 
of office for just one hour to have a stein and a caviare sandwich 
somewhere on Thirty-fourth Street, and stand and watch the 
street cars go by, and smell the peanut roaster at old Giuseppe's 
fruit stand. 

But with all these divertissements and many more, 
"Cabbages and Kings" was, comparatively, a failure. 
It is not equal to the sum total of its seventeen constitu- 
ent parts. It has unity, but it is the unity of a sus- 
tained cleverness carried to an extreme. Suspense is 
preserved but interest is sacrificed. Chapters XII and 
XIII, called respectively "Shoes" and "Ships," will 
illustrate. These two stories had not been previously 
published. They were fashioned and put in after the 
author had decided to amplify his title by giving promi- 
nence to the stanza — 

"The time has come," the Walrus said, 

"To talk of many things; 
Of shoes and ships and sealing-wax, 
And cabbages and kings." 

Sealing-wax had been already incidentally mentioned 
in "The Lotus and the Bottle" which was published in 
January, 1902, and which forms the second chapter of 
198 



FINDING HIMSELF IX NEW YORK 
"Cabbages and Kings." But "shoes and ships" must 
be accounted for, though the natives of Coralio went 
barefooted. So five hundred pounds of stiff, dry 
cockleburrs are shipped from Alabama and sprinkled 
by night along the narrow sidewalks of Coralio. Shoes 
become a necessity and ships bring them, along with 
more cockleburrs. But, in the meanwhile, the two 
central characters of the novel, Goodwin and his wife, 
are dropped from the story. They must wait till the 
exactions of line three of our prefatory stanza are met 
and resolved. But, more disconcerting still, Mr. and 
Mrs. Goodwin are presented as charlatans and thieves. 
It is not till the seventeenth chapter is reached that we 
find we have been deceived. Mr. and Mrs. Goodwin 
are neither charlatans nor thieves. They are honest, 
clever, and likable. We must reread the whole story 
to reinstate them. Clever? Too clever. 

By the time "Cabbages and Kings" was published, 
Mew York life had gripped O. Henry and he had en- 
tered upon his most prolific period. During 1904, if w T e 
omit the stories published in "Cabbages and Kings" 
and count only those that have since appeared in book 
form, the total is sixty-five; the total for 1905 is fifty. 
No other years of his life approximated such an output. 
Of these hundred and fifteen stories all but twenty-one 
appeared in the columns of the New York World and 
all but sixteen deal directly or indirectly with New York 

199 



O. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 

City. O. Henry's contract with the World called for 
a story a week, the payment for each being one hundred 
dollars. They would bring now at the lowest estimate, 
writes a New York editor, between a thousand and 
fifteen hundred dollars each. When we consider not 
only the number of these stories but their differences 
of mood and manner, their equal mastery of humour 
and pathos, their sheer originality of conception and 
execution, and their steadily increasing appeal in book 
form to every grade of reader, it becomes evident that a 
new chapter has been added to the annals of narrative 
genius in this country. The short story in 1904 and 
1905 developed a new flexibility, established new means 
of communication between literature and life, and, as a 
mirror of certain aspects of American society, attained 
a fidelity and an adequacy never before achieved. 

In 1906, O. Henry's second book appeared, "The 
Four Million." It stamped the author as the foremost 
American short story writer of his time and furnished 
also in its famous prefatory note a clue to his activities 
and interests during 1904-1905: 



Not very long ago some one invented the assertion that there 
were only "Four Hundred" people in New York City who were 
really worth noticing. But a wiser man has arisen— the census 
taker — and his larger estimate of human interest has been preferred 
in marking out the field of these little stories of the "Four Mil- 
lion." 
200 




Courtesy of Mr. Arthur Bartlctt Maurice 

NO. 55 IRVING PLACE. AN EARLY NEW YORK 
HOME OF O. HENRY 



FINDING HIMSELF IN NEW YORK 
Each succeeding year until 1911 was to be marked by 
the publication of two collections of his stories: "The 
Trimmed Lamp" and "Heart of the West" in 1907, 
"The Voice of the City" and "The Gentle Grafter" in 
1908, "Roads of Destiny" and "Options" in 1909, 
"Strictly Business" and "Whirligigs" in 1910. A 
year after his death "Sixes and Sevens" appeared, and 
in 1913 "Rolling Stones," the latter being chiefly a 
collection of early material with an Introduction by the 
lamented Harry Peyton Steger. 

"The Trimmed Lamp," "The Voice of the City," 
and "Strictly Business" are "more stories of the four 
million" and were written for the most part in 1904- 
1905. "Heart of the West" is the fruit of the years 
spent in Texas, most of the stories having appeared 
before 1905. "The Gentle Grafter" found its inspira- 
tion in the stories told to O. Henry from 1898 to 1901. 
The first eleven stories in this book had not before been 
published. They probably belong, as do some of the 
stories in "Cabbages and Kings," to the accumulation 
of manuscript mentioned by O. Henry in his letter to 
Mrs. Roach (see page 160), though they could hardly 
have been made ready for publication before 1908. 

"The Gentle Grafter" is not a novel. It is a kind of 
"mulct'em in parvo," a string of "Autolycan adven- 
tures" told by one whose vocabulary consisted chiefly of 
"contraband sophistries" and whose life conformed to 

201 



O. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 

"the gilded rule." "I never skin a sucker," says Jeff, 
in an autobiographic confession, "without admiring 
the prismatic beauty of his scales. I never sell a little 
auriferous trifle to the man with the hoe without notic- 
ing the beautiful harmony there is between gold and 
green." The stories take place in the South, in the 
West, and in New York. In each of the succeeding 
collections, "Roads of Destiny," "Options," "Strictly 
Business," "Whirligigs," and "Sixes and Sevens," O. 
Henry mingles Latin America, the South, the West, and 
New York. The titles, however, are arbitrary and are 
not intended as keynotes to the contents. 

But the real life of 0. Henry in New York is to be 
sought in the ideas out of which the stories grew rather 
than in the succession of incidents that happened to 
him or in the names of the books that he published. 
A re-reading of the stories in the order in which they 
were written seems to show that from first to last he 
moved from theme to theme. Character, plot, and 
setting were ancillary to the central conception — 
were but the concrete expressions of the changing ideas 
that he had in mind. Only a few of these will be traced, 
enough to indicate, however, that his real biography, 
the biography of his mind, is to be found in his work. 



202 



CHAPTER EIGHT 

FAVOURITE THEMES 

EVERY one who has heard O. Henry's stories talked 
about or has talked about them himself will recall or 
admit the frequent recurrence of some such expression 
as, "I can't remember the name of the story but the 
point is this." Then will follow the special bit of 
philosophy, the striking trait of human nature, the 
new aspect of an old truth, the novel revelation of 
character, the wider meaning given to a current saying, 
or whatever else it may be that constitutes the point 
or underlying theme of the story. Of no other stories 
is it said or could it be said so frequently, "The point 
is this," because no other writer of stories has, I 
think, touched upon such an array of interesting 
themes. 

Most of those who have commented upon 0. Henry's 
work have singled out his technique, especially his un- 
expected endings, as his distinctive contribution to the 
American short story. "I cannot drop this topic," says 
Professor Walter B. Pitkin, author of "The Art and the 
Business of Story Writing," "without urging the student 
to study carefully the maturer stories of 0. Henry, 

203 



O. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 

who surpasses all writers, past and present, in his 
mastery of the direct denouement." 

The unexpected ending, however, is not, even tech- 
nically, the main point in the structural excellence of 
a short story. Skill here marks only the convergence 
and culmination of structural excellencies that have 
stamped the story from the beginning. The crack of the 
whip at the end is a mechanical feat as compared with 
the skilful manipulation that made it possible. Walter 
Pater speaks somewhere — and O. Henry's best stories 
are perfect illustrations — of "that architectural con- 
ception of the work which perceives the end in the 
beginning and never loses sight of it, and in every part 
is conscious of all the rest, till the last sentence does 
but, with undiminished vigor, unfold and justify the 
first." In fact, it is not the surprise at the end that 
reveals the technical jnastery of 0. Henry or of Poe or 
of De Maupassant. It is rather the instantly succeed- 
ing second surprise that there should have been a first 
surprise : it is the clash of the unexpected but inevitable. 

It is not technique, however, that has given O. Henry 
his wide and widening vogue. Technique starts no 
after-tones. It flashes and is gone. It makes no 
pathways for reflection. If a story leaves a residuum, 
it is a residuum of theme, bared and vivified by tech- 
nique but not created by it. It is O. Henry's distinc- 
tion that he has enlarged the area of the American short 
204 



FAVOURITE THEMES 

story by enriching and diversifying its social themes. 
In his hands the short story has become the organ of a 
social consciousness more varied and multiform than it 
had ever expressed before. Old Sir John Davies once 
said of the soul that it was : 

Much like a subtle spider which doth sit 

In middle of her web, which spreadeth wide; 

If aught do touch the utmost thread of it, 
She feels it instantly on every side. 

So was O. Henry. Whether in North Carolina or 
Texas or Latin America or New York an instant re- 
sponsiveness to the humour or the pathos or the mere 
human interest of men and women playing their part 
in the drama of life was always his distinguishing char- 
acteristic. It was not merely that he observed closely. 
Beneath the power to observe and the skill to reproduce 
lay a passionate interest in social phenomena which 
with him no other interest ever equalled or ever threat- 
ened to replace. 

'Man in solitude made little appeal to O. Henry, 
though he had seen much of solitude himself. But 
man in society, his " humours" in the old sense, his 
whims and vagaries, his tragedies and comedies and 
tragi-comedies, his conflicts with individual and in- 
stitutional forces, his complex motives, the good under- 
lying the evil, the ideal lurking potent but unsuspected 
within — whatever entered as an essential factor into 

205 



0. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 

the social life of men and women wrought a sort of spell 
upon 0. Henry and found increasing expression in his 
art. It was not startling plots that he sought: it was 
human nature themes, themes beckoning to him from 
the life about him but not yet wrought into short story 
form. 

Take the theme that O. Henry calls "turning the 
tables on Haroun al Raschid." It emerges first in 
"While the Auto Waits," published in May, 1903, a 
month after "A Retrieved Reformation." As if afraid 
that his pen-name was becoming unduly prominent, 
O. Henry signs the story James L. Bliss. "We do not 
know who James Bliss is," wrote the critic of the New 
York Times. "The name is a new one to us. But we 
defy any one to produce a French short story writer 
of the present day who is capable of producing anything 
finer than 'While the Auto Waits.'" O. Henry had 
discovered a little unexploited corner of human nature 
which he was further to develop and diversify in "The 
Caliph and the Cad," "The Caliph, Cupid, and the 
Clock," "Lost on Dress Parade," and "Transients in 
Arcadia." 

The psychology is sound. Shakespeare would have 
sanctioned it. 

Look, what thy soul holds dear, imagine it 
To lie the way thou go'st, not whence thou comest. 
206 



FAVOURITE THEMES 
Browning's Pippa would have approved. 

For am I not, this day, 
Whate'er I please? What shall I please to-day? 
My morn, noon, eve and night — how spend my day? 
To-morrow I must be Pippa who winds silk, 
The whole year round, to earn just bread and milk : 
But, this one day, I have leave to go, 
And play out my fancy's fullest games. 

If Haroun al Raschid found it diverting to wander in- 
cognito among his poor subjects, why should not "the 
humble and poverty-stricken" of this more modern and 
self -expressive age play the ultra-rich once in a while? 
They do, but they had lacked a spokesman till 0. 
Henry appeared for them. He, by the way, goes with 
them in spirit and they all return to their tasks happy 
and refreshed. They have given their imagination a 
surf bath. 

Habit is another favourite theme. A man believes 
that he has conquered a certain deeply rooted habit, or 
hopes he has. By a decisive act or experience he puts 
a certain stage of his life, as he thinks, behind him. 
O. Henry is not greatly interested in how he does this: 
he may change from a drifting tramp to a daring desper- 
ado; he may marry; he may undergo an emotional ref- 
ormation which seems to run a line of cleavage between 
the old life and the new; a woman may bid farewell to 

207 



O. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 

her position as cashier in a downtown restaurant and 
enter the ranks of the most exclusive society. 

But, however the break with the past comes about, 
O. Henry is profoundly interested in the possibilities of 
relapse. Such stories, to mention them in the order of 
their writing, as "The Passing of Black Eagle," "A 
Comedy in Rubber," "From the Cabby's Seat," "The 
Pendulum," "The Romance of a Busy Broker," "The 
Ferry of Unfulfilment," "The Girl and the Habit," 
and "The Harbinger" would form an interesting pen- 
dant to William James's epochal essay on habit. In- 
deed I have often wondered whether the great psycholo- 
gist's fondness for O. Henry was not due, in part at 
least, to the freshness and variety of the story teller's 
illustrations of mental traits and mental whimsies. 
No one, at any rate, can read the stories mentioned 
without concluding that O. Henry had at least one 
conviction about habit. It is that when the old environ- 
ment comes back the old habit is pretty sure to come 
with it. 

Of these particular stories, "The Pendulum" makes 
unquestionably the deepest impression. O. Henry at 
first called it "Katy of Frogmore Flats" but reconsid- 
ered and gave it its present name, thus indicating that 
the story is a dramatization of the measured to-and-fro, 
the monotonous tick-tock of a life dominated by routine. 
"The Pendulum" should be read along with the story 



FAVOURITE THEMES 

by De Maupassant called "An Artist." Each has habit 
as its central theme, and the two reveal the most char- 
acteristic differences of their authors. In the setting, 
the tone, the story proper, the conversations, the char- 
acters, the attitude of the author to his work, there 
is hardly an element of the modern short story that is 
not sharply contrasted in these two little masterpieces, 
neither of which numbers two thousand words. 

" Man lives by habits indeed, but what he lives for 
is thrills and excitements." These words are Professor 
James's,* not O. Henry's, but 0. Henry would have 
heartily applauded them. "What's around the corner " 
seems at first glance too vague or too inclusive to be 
labelled a distinctive theme. But it was distinctive 
with 0. Henry, distinctive in his conduct, distinctive 
in his art. What was at first felt to be an innate im- 
pulse, potent but indefinable, came later to be resolutely 
probed for short story material. "At every corner," 
he writes,f "handkerchiefs drop, fingers beckon, eyes 
besiege, and the lost, the lonely, the rapturous, the 
mysterious, the perilous, changing clues of adventure 
are slipped into our fingers. But few of us are willing to 
hold and follow them. We are grown stiff with the 
ramrod of convention down our backs. We pass on; 



♦"Memories and Studies," page 303. 
t"The Green Door." 

209 



0. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 

and some day we come, at the end of a very dull life, 
to reflect that our romance has been a pallid thing of a 
marriage or two, a satin rosette kept in a safe-deposit 
drawer, and a lifelong feud with a steam radiator." 

From "The Enchanted Kiss," written in prison, to 
"The Venturers," written a year before his death, one 
may trace the footprints of characters who, in dream or 
vision, in sportive fancy or earnest resolve, traverse the 
far boundaries of life, couching their lances for routine 
in all of its shapes, seeking "a subject without a predi- 
cate, a road without an end, a question without an 
answer, a cause without an effect, a gulf stream in life's 
ocean." Fate, destiny, romance, adventure, the lure 
of divergent roads, the gleam of mysterious signals, the 
beckonings of the Big City — these are the signs to be 
followed. They may lead you astray but you will at 
least have had the zest of pursuit without the satiety 
of conquest. 

"Nearly all of us," says O. Henry, of the unheroic 
hero of "The Enchanted Kiss," "have, at some point 
in our lives — either to excuse our own stupidity or 
placate our consciences — promulgated some theory of 
fatalism. We have set up an intelligent Fate that 
works by codes and signals. Tansey had done likewise; 
and now he read, through the night's incidents, the 
finger-prints of destiny. Each excursion that he had 
made had led to the one paramount finale — to Katie 
210 



FAVOURITE THEMES 

and that kiss, which survived and grew strong and in- 
toxicating in his memory. Clearly, Fate was holding 
up to him the mirror that night, calling him to observe 
what awaited him at the end of whichever road he 
might take. He immediately turned, and hurried 
homeward." 

Fate did her part but Tansey, a "recreant follower 
of destiny," did not do his. In his absinthe-born 
dreams he had tried two roads and found knightly ex- 
ploits and Katie's lips waiting for him at the end of each. 
Now, though unaided by absinthe, it is no wonder that 
he takes confidently the homeward road, the road lead- 
ing to the Peek boarding-house. Katie was waiting, 
but— 

The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, 
But in ourselves that we are underlings. 

"The Roads of Destiny," the most carefully wrought 
out of 0. Henry's longer stories, is an answer to the 
question with which it begins: 

I go to seek on many roads 

What is to be. 
True heart and strong, with love to light — 
Will they not bear me in the fight 
To order, shun or wield or mould 

My Destiny? 

The answer is: No. Take what road you please, the 
right or the left or the home-faring, the same destiny 

211 



O. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 

awaits you. You cannot "order, shun or wield or 
mould" it. The story has an Alexander Dumas ex- 
terior, a Poe structure, and an Omar Khayyam interior. 
In "The Roads We Take," Shark Dodson says: 



I was born on a farm in Ulster County, New York. I ran 
away from home when I was seventeen. It was an accident my 
comin' West. I was walkin' along the road with my clothes in 
a bundle, makin' for New York City. I had an idea of goin' 
there and makin' lots of money. I always felt like I could do it. 
I came to a place one evenin' where the road forked and I didn't 
know which fork to take. I studied about it for half an hour, 
and then I took theleft-hand. That night I run into the camp of 
a Wild West show that was travelin' among the little towns, and 
I went West with it. I've often wondered if I wouldn't have 
turned out different if I'd took the other road. 

The reply sums up O. Henry's last word on fate, 
destiny, and roads: 

"Oh, I reckon you'd have ended up about the same," said Bob 
Tidball, cheerfully philosophical. "It ain't the roads we take; 
it's what's inside of us that makes us turn out the way we do." 

It was certainly so with Shark Dodson. He "wouldn't 
have turned out different." He only dreamed that 
he took the left-hand road and became the murderer 
of his friend. He took, in fact, the right-hand road, 
came to New York, and became a Wall Street broker. 
But on awaking from his dream he sacrificed a friend 
212 



FAVOURITE THEMES 

to inexorable cupidity, thus doing as a broker what he 
dreamed that he had done as a bandit. 

In "The Complete Life of John Hopkins,'' fate and 
destiny give place to pure romance. "There is a 
saying," begins the author, "that no man has tasted the 
full flavor of life until he has known poverty, love, and 
war." But the three dwell in the city rather than in 
the country: 

In the Big City large and sudden things happen. You round a 
corner and thrust the rib of your umbrella into the eye of your 
old friend from Kootenai Falls. You stroll out to pluck a Sweet 
William in the park — and lo! bandits attack you — you are am- 
bulanced to the hospital — you marry your nurse; are divorced — 
get squeezed while short on U. P. S. and D. O. W. N. S. — stand in 
the bread line — marry an heiress, take out your laundry and pay 
your club dues — seemingly all in the wink of an eye. You travel 
the streets, and a finger beckons to you, a handkerchief is dropped 
for you, a brick is dropped upon you, the elevator cable or your 
bank breaks, a table d'hote or your wife disagrees with you, and 
Fate tosses you about like cork crumbs in wine opened by an 
un-feed waiter. The City is a sprightly youngster, and you are 
red paint upon its toy, and you get licked off. 

John Hopkins experienced poverty, love, and war 
between the lighting and relighting of a five-cent cigar. 
But they were thrust upon him. He was no true adven- 
turer. The first true adventurer is Rudolf Steiner of 
"The Green Door." Here is the test: 

Suppose you should be walking down Broadway after dinner 
with ten minutes allotted to the consummation of your cigar 

213 



0. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 

while you are choosing between a diverting tragedy and something 
serious in the way of vaudeville. Suddenly a hand is laid upon 
your arm. You turn to look into the thrilling eyes of a beautiful 
woman, wonderful in diamonds and Russian sables. She thrusts 
hurriedly into your hand an extremely hot buttered roll, flashes 
out a tiny pair of scissors, snips off the second button of your 
overcoat, meaningly ejaculates the one word, * 'parallelogram !" 
and swiftly flies down a cross street, looking back fearfully over 
her shoulder. 

That would be pure adventure. Would you accept it? Not 
you. You would flush with embarrassment; you would sheep- 
ishly drop the roll and continue down Broadway, fumbling feebly 
for the missing button. This you would do unless you are one of 
the blessed few in whom the pure spirit of adventure is not dead. 



But the venturer is a finer fellow than the adventurer, 
and in "The Venturers" O. Henry tilts for the last time 
at a theme which, if health had not failed, says Mr. Gil- 
man Hall, would have drawn from him many more 
stories. In a little backless notebook which O. Henry 
used in New York I find the jotting from which "The 
Venturers" grew. The notebook kept in Columbus 
gives only the titles of completed stories and the names 
of the magazines to which they were forwarded. The 
New York notebook mentions no magazines but con- 
tains in most cases only the bare theme or motif that 
was later to be elaborated into a story. Many of 
these jottings proved unmanageable and left no story 
issue. But "The Venturers" harks back to this entry, 
the last in the book: "Followers of chance — Two 
214 



FAVOURITE THEMES 
knights-errant — One leaves girl and other marries 
her for what may be 'around the corner.' " 

Of the two characters in the story, Forster and Ives, 
the latter is the better talker. The essayist in O. Henry 
never appeared to better advantage than in the re- 
sourceful way in which Ives is made to expound the 
nature of a venturer: 



I am a man who has made a lifetime search after the to-be- 
continued-in-our-next. I am not like the ordinary adventurer 
who strikes for a coveted prize. Nor yet am I like a gambler who 
knows he is either to win or lose a certain set stake. What I 
want is to encounter an adventure to which I can predict no con- 
clusion. It is the breath of existence to me to dare Fate in its 
blindest manifestations. The world has come to run so much by 
rote and gravitation that you can enter upon hardly any footpath 
of chance to which you do not find signboards informing you of 
what you may expect at its end. . . . Only a few times 
have I met a true venturer — one who does not ask a schedule and 
map from Fate when he begins a journey. But, as the world be- 
comes more civilized and wiser, the more difficult it is to come upon 
an adventure the end of which you cannot foresee. In the Eliz- 
abethan days you could assault the watch, wring knockers from 
doors and have a jolly set-to with the blades in any convenient 
angle of a wall and "get away with it." Nowadays, if you speak 
disrespectfully to a policeman, all that is left to the most romantic 
fancy is to conjecture in what particular police station he will 
land you. . . . Things are not much better abroad than 
they are at home. The whole world seems to be overrun by con- 
clusions. The only thing that interests me greatly is a premise. 
I've tried shooting big game in Africa. I know what an express 
rifle will do at so many yards; and when an elephant or a rhi- 
noceros falls to the bullet, I enjoy it about as much as I did when 

215 



O. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 

I was kept in after school to do a sum in long division on the 
blackboard. . . . The sun has risen on the Arabian nights. 
There are no more caliphs. The fisherman's vase is turned to 
a vacuum bottle, warranted to keep any genie boiling or frozen 
for forty-eight hours. Life moves by rote. Science has killed 
adventure. There are no more opportunities such as Columbus 
and the man who ate the first oyster had. The only certain 
thing is that there is nothing uncertain. 



In fact, the central idea of "The Venturers," the 
revolt against the calculable, seems at times to run 
away with the story itself. Ives marries Miss Marsden 
at last because he became convinced that marriage is 
the greatest "venture" of all. But what convinced 
him? The expository part of the narrative has put 
the emphasis elsewhere. The centre of the story seems 
not quite in the middle. 

Another theme, one that O. Henry has almost pre- 
empted, is the shop-girl. 



Five years — the pencil and the yellow pad 
Are laid away. Our changes run so swift 
That many newer pinnacles now lift 
Above the old four million he made glad. 
But still the heart of his well-loved Bagdad 
Upon-the-Subway is to him renewed. 
He knew, beneath her harmless platitude, 
The gentler secrets that the shop-girl had.* 



*Mr. Christopher Morley in the New York Evening Post, June 5, 1915. 

216 



FAVOURITE THEMES 

Mr. Nicholas Vachel Lindsay calls him "the little shop- 
girl's knight": 

And be it said, 'mid these his pranks so odd, 
With something nigh to chivalry he trod, 
And oft the drear and driven would defend — 
The little shop-girl's knight, unto the end.* 

Certainly no other American writer has so identified 
himself with the life problems of the shop-girl in New 
York as has O. Henry. In his thinking she was an 
inseparable part of the larger life of the city. She 
belonged to the class that he thought of as under a 
strain and his interest in her welfare grew with his 
knowledge of the conditions surrounding her. "Across 
every counter of the New York department store," 
writes Mr. Arthur Bartlett Maurice, f "is the shadow of 
O. Henry." It has been said that 0. Henry laughs 
with the shop-girl rather than at her, but the truth is 
that he does not laugh at all when she is his theme; 
he smiles here and there but the smile is at the humours 
of life itself rather than at the shop-girl in particular. 

His first shop-girl story, "A Lickpenny Lover," was 
written in the summer of 1904. There are thousands 
of working girls in New York whose world is bounded 
by Coney Island. From some such commonplace of 



•"The Knight in Disguise" (the American Magazine, June, 1912). 
tThe Bookman, New York, January, 1916. 

217 



O. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 

daily speech O. Henry took his cue. Masie, a shop-girl, 
is courted by Irving Carter, artist, millionaire, traveller, 
poet, gentleman. He had fallen in love at first sight. 
When he asks if he may call at her home she laughs and 
proposes a meeting at the corner of Eighth Avenue and 
Forty-eighth Street. He is troubled but accepts. 

Carter did not know the shop-girl. He did not know that her 
home is often either a scarcely habitable tiny room or a domicile 
filled to overflowing with kith and kin. The street-corner is her 
parlor, the park is her drawing-room, the avenue is her garden 
walk; yet for the most part she is as inviolate mistress of herself 
in them as is my lady inside her tapestried chamber. 

Two weeks later he courts her with all the ardour 
of his nature and all the resources of his vocabulary. 
"Marry me, Masie," he whispered, "and we will go 
away from this ugly city to beautiful ones. I know 
where I should take you," and he launched into an 
impassioned picturing of palaces, towers, gondolas, 
India and her ancient cities, Hindoos, Japanese gar- 
dens — but Masie had risen to her feet. The next 
morning she scornfully remarked to her chum Lu: 
"What do you think that fellow wanted me to do? 
He wanted me to marry him and go down to Coney 
Island for a wedding tour!" 

So the Hostess in "Henry V" thought that the dying 
Falstaff only "babbled of green fields," but he was re- 
peating or trying to repeat the Twenty-third Psalm. 
218 



FAVOURITE THEMES 

Words meant to Masie and to the poor Hostess only 
what their experience would let them mean. And 
words mean no more than that to any of us. The 
pathos as well as the humour of speech as a social 
instrument is that the appeal of every word is measured 
not by its formal definition but by our orbit of experi- 
ence and association. The tragedy of the circumscribed 
life is not that it occasionally mistakes the imitation 
world for the real world but that the imitation world is 
its all. There is humour in the story but it is close 
to pathos. It is furnished by life rather than by 
Masie. 

"The Lickpenny Lover" was followed by four stories 
which established O. Henry's right to be called the 
knight of the shop-girl. These stories are constructive 
in aim and are energized by a mingled sympathy and 
indignation that recall Dickens on every page. In the 
first, "Elsie in New York," O. Henry, recognizing that 
he is in Dickensland, ends the story not with a sudden 
surprise but with a quotation from "him of Gad's Hill, 
before whom, if you doff not your hat, you shall stand 
with a covered pumpkin": 



Lost, Your Excellency. Lost, Associations and Societies. Lost, 
Right Reverends and Wrong Reverends of every order. Lost, 
Reformers and Lawmakers, born with heavenly compassion in 
your hearts, but with the reverence of money in your souls. And 
lost thus around us every day. 

219 



0. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 

But where Dickens wrote "Dead," 0. Henry writes 
"Lost." It is the keyword to all of these stories. Elsie 
was lost before she became a shop-girl. She was only 
seeking a position, and she found three. But at the 
very threshold of each she was met and shooed away 
by the agent of some self-styled charitable organization. 
"But what am I to do?" asks Elsie. The agents had 
nothing to suggest. They knew nothing more than 
that the places had been ticketed as potentially bad. 
They could only say "Go," not "Come." If one had 
forgotten the name of this story he would doubtless say 
and say rightly: "The point of it is that many chari- 
table organizations of New York are very successful in 
preventing girls from securing positions but do nothing 
to secure other positions for them." 

In "The Guilty Party, an East Side Tragedy," Liz 
drifts to the street and ruin because her father would do 
nothing to make home attractive for her. She is not a 
shop-girl but she belongs here: she is one of the lost 
whom the world judged wrongly. The action of the 
story begins: 

A little girl of twelve came up timidly to the man reading and 
resting by the window, and said: 

" Papa, won't you play a game of checkers with me if you aren't 
too tired?" 

The red-haired, unshaven, untidy man, sitting shoeless by the 
window, answered with a frown: 

"Checkers! No, I won't. Can't a man who works hard all 



FAVOURITE THEMES 

day have a little rest when he comes home? Why don't you go 
out and play with the other kids on the sidewalk?" 

The woman who was cooking came to the door. 

"John," she said, "I don't like for Lizzie to play in the street. 
They learn too much there that ain't good for 'em. She's been 
in the house all day long. It seems that you might give up a 
little of your time to amuse her when you come home." 

"Let her go out and play like the rest of 'em if she wants to be 
amused," said the red-haired, unshaven, untidy man, "and don't 
bother me." 



Like its more famous successor, "The Guilty Party" 
ends in a dream. The case is tried in the next world. 
The celestial court-officer discharges Liz, though she 
had killed her betrayer and committed suicide. He 
then pronounces the verdict: 

The guilty party you've got to look for in this case is a red- 
haired, unshaven, untidy man, sitting by the window reading in 
his stocking feet, while his children play in the streets. Get a 
move on you. 

Now, wasn't that a silly dream? 

"An Unfinished Story," framed on the model of 
"The Guilty Party," is O. Henry's indictment of em- 
ployers who cause the ruin of working girls by under- 
paying them. It is probably the most admired of 
O. Henry's stories. In the ten lists of the ten preferred 
stories sent to the Bookman* this story of less than 



♦See page 170. 

221 



0. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 

two thousand five hundred words was mentioned seven 
times, "A Municipal Report" coming next with six 
mentions. Some one has said that Dickens' "Christ- 
mas Carol" has done more good than any other story 
ever written. As the years go by will not the " Christ- 
mas Carol" be overtaken by "An Unfinished Story?" 
It was not hunger, it was not the need of the so-called 
necessities that wrecked Dulcie's life. The cause lay 
deeper than that; it belonged not to the eternal-human 
but to the eternal-womanly. It was neither food nor 
clothing; it was the natural love of adornment. Dulcie 
received $6 a week. The necessities amounted to $4.76. 
"I hold my pen poised in vain," says O. Henry, "when 
I would add to Dulcie's life some of those joys that 
belong. to woman by virtue of all the unwritten, sacred, 
natural, inactive ordinances of the equity of heaven." 
There is no crack of the whip at the end : there is the ring 
of steel: 



As I said before, I dreamed that I was standing near a crowd of 
prosperous-looking angels, and a policeman took me by the wing 
and asked if I belonged with them. 

"Who are they?" I asked. 

"Why," said he, "they are the men who hired working girls, 
and paid 'em five or six dollars a week to live on. Are you one of 
the bunch?" 

"Not on your immortality," said I. "I'm only the fellow that 
set fire to an orphan asylum, and murdered a blind man for his 
pennies." 
222 



FAVOURITE THEMES 

In "Brickdust Row" indictment is brought not 
against guardians of the young who are found to be 
prohibitive rather than cooperative; it is not against the 
careless father, nor the miserly employer. The shaft is 
aimed at the owners of houses tenanted by working 
girls. These houses, having no parlours or reception 
rooms, compel the occupants to meet their friends 
"sometimes on the boat, sometimes in the park, some- 
times on the street." Blinker, another Irving Carter, 
falls in love with Florence, another Masie. But Flor- 
ence lives in Brickdust Row. "They call it that," says 
Florence, "because there's red dust from the bricks 
crumbling over everything. I've lived there for more 
than four years. There's no place to receive company. 
You can't have anybody come to your room. What 
else is there to do? A girl has got to meet the men, 
hasn't she? . . . The first time one spoke to me 
on the street, I ran home and cried all night. But you 
get used to it. I meet a good many nice fellows at 
church. I go on rainy days and stand in the vestibule 
until one comes up with an umbrella. I wish there 
was a parlour, so I could ask you to call, Mr. Blinker." 
Blinker owns Brickdust Row. "Do what you please 
with it," he says to his lawyer the next morning. 
"Remodel it, burn it, raze it to the ground. But, man, 
it's too late I tell you. It's too late. It's too lair. 

It's too late." 

223 



O. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 

But the greatest of the shop-girl stories as a story is, 
to my thinking, "The Trimmed Lamp." It is the only 
one written for the shop-girl rather than about her. 
But it is not for her alone; it is for all, of whatever age 
or sex, who work at tasks not commonly rated as cul- 
tural. Much has been said and written in recent years 
about " self -culture through the vocation," but nothing 
so apt and adequate, I think, as this little story about 
Nan and Lou and Dan. Froude touched the rim of it 
when he wrote, fifty years ago : 



Every occupation, even the meanest — I don't say the scavenger's 
or the chimney-sweep's — but every productive occupation which 
adds anything to the capital of mankind, if followed assiduously 
with a desire to understand everything connected with it, is an 
ascending stair whose summit is nowhere, and from the successive 
steps of which the horizon of knowledge perpetually enlarges. 



But Froude limited his occupations too narrowly. 
He did not quite glimpse the vision of "The Trimmed 
Lamp." He was afraid to break away from the old 
and minutely graduated scale of vocations with their 
traditional degrees of respectability. But this is just 
what "The Trimmed Lamp" does. It dramatizes the 
truth that, in spite of inherited divisions and sub- 
divisions, there are only two occupations worth thinking 
about, and these are one too many. Everybody who 
has an occupation uses it as a means of subsisting or as 
2M 



FAVOURITE THEMES 
a means of growing, as a treadmill or as a stairway, as a 
shut door or as an open window, as a grindstone or as a 
stepping-stone. 

Every worker may learn from his occupation, "even 
the meanest," the difference between good work and 
bad work in his particular calling. But the difference 
between good work and bad work here is the difference 
between good work and bad work everywhere. Once 
erect the standard — and it may be erected by the chim- 
ney-sweep as well as by the artist — growth is assured. 
The lever of Archimedes finds its analogue to-day 
in such a conception of one's work as moves him to 
say, "I will examine the universe as it is related to 
this." Culture is not in the job; it is in the attitude 
to the job. 

Nan illustrates every stage in the upward transition. 
"'The Trimmed Lamp,'" said O. Henry, "is the other 
side of 'An Unfinished Story." It is the other side of 
all the stories in which the light is focussed on the down- 
ward slope. Nan is the ascending shop-girl. Lou, a 
piecework ironer in a hand laundry, is her antithesis. 
Dan is what Coventry Patmore somewhere calls the 
punctum indifferens, "the point of rest." He is what 
Kent is in "King Lear," Friar Laurence in "Romeo and 
Juliet," Horatio in "Hamlet." "He was of that good 
kind," says O. Henry, "that you are likely to forget 
while they are present, but to remember distinctly after 

885 



0. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 

they are gone." "Faithful? Well, he was on hand 
when Mary would have had to hire a dozen subpoena 
servers to find her lamb." Lou has him on her string 
at first but casts him off. 

Three months pass. Nancy and Lou meet acciden- 
tally on the border of a little quiet park and Nancy 
notices that "prosperity had descended upon Lou, 
manifesting itself in costly furs, flashing gems, and 
creations of the tailors' art." 

"Yes, I'm still in the store," said Nancy, "but I'm going to 
leave it next week. I've made my catch — the biggest catch in 
the world. You won't mind now, Lou, will you? I'm going to 
be married to Dan — to Dan! — he's my Dan now — why, Lou!" 

Around the corner of the park strolled one of those new-crop, 
smooth-faced young policemen that are making the force more 
endurable — at least to the eye. He saw a woman with an expen- 
sive fur coat and diamond-ringed hands crouching down against 
the iron fence of the park sobbing turbulently, while a slender, 
plainly-dressed working girl leaned close, trying to console her. 
But the Gibsonian cop, being of the new order, passed on, pre- 
tending not to notice, for he was wise enough to know that these 
matters are beyond help, so far as the power he represents is con- 
cerned, though he rap the pavement with his nightstick till the 
sound goes up to the furthermost stars. 

But the shop-girl is a part of a larger theme and that 
theme is the city. 

What a world he left behind him, what 
a web of wonder tales, 
Fact and fiction subtly woven on the 
spinning wheel of Truth! 
226 






FAVOURITE THEMES 

How he caught the key of living in 
the noises of the town, 
Major music, minor dirges, rhapsodies 
of Age and Youth ! 
In the twilight of the city, as I 
dreamed, as I dreamed, 
Watching that eternal drama in the 
ever-pulsing street, 
All about me seemed to murmur of the 
master passed away, 
And his requiem was sounded in the 
city's fever beat.* 

A city was to O. Henry not merely a collective entity, 
not merely an individuality; certainly not a munici- 
pality: it was a personality. In "The Making of a 
New Yorker," it is said of Raggles: 

He studied cities as women study their reflections in mirrors ; as 
children study the glue and sawdust of a dislocated doll; as the 
men who write about wild animals study the cages in the zoo. A 
city to Haggles was not merely a pile of bricks and mortar, peopled 
by a certain number of inhabitants; it was a thing with a soul, 
characteristic and distinct; an individual conglomeration of life, 
with its own peculiar essence, flavor, and feeling. 

The words are as true of 0. Henry himself as any 
that he ever wrote. And he was always so. When he 
was eighteen years old, six of us went on a camping 
trip from Greensboro to old Pilot Mountain and on to 
the Pinnacles of the Dan. Brief stops were made at 

*"0. Henry: In Memoriam," by Mr. Elias Licbcrman. 

227 



O. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 

Kernersville, Mount Airy, Danbury, and intervening 
villages. O. Henry, it is needless to say, was the life 
of the party and, though much has been forgotten, 
none of us will forget his peculiar interest in these little 
towns or his quaint, luminous, incisive comments on 
them as we drove to the next camping place. It was 
not so much the intensity of his interest that impressed 
us or that lingers in the memory still. It was that 
he was interested at all in places so much smaller and, 
as we thought, less worth while than our own native 
Greensboro. But interested he was, keenly and stead- 
fastly, and in every book that he has written towns 
and cities loom large in his survey of human 
life. 

His Latin American stories may serve as illustrations. 
They deal sparingly with native characters. O. Henry 
evidently felt some hesitation here, for in his rapid 
journey from Honduras around both coasts of South 
America the unit of progress was the coastal town. 
There was little time to study native character as he 
studied it on his own soil. The city, therefore, rather 
than the citizen, is made prominent. An American 
doctor, for example, who has travelled widely in Latin 
America, considers O. Henry's description of Espiritu 
unequalled in accuracy and vividness as a sketch of 
the typical Latin American coastal town. Certainly 
no one of his Latin American character portraits is 
228 



FAVOURITE THEMES 

as detailed or as intimate. Sully Magoon is talk- 
ing: 

Take a lot of Filipino huts and a couple of hundred brick-kilns 
and arrange 'em in squares in a cemetery. Cart down all the 
conservatory plants in the Astor and Vanderbilt greenhouses, 
and stick 'em about wherever there's room. Turn all the Bellevuc 
patients and the barbers' convention and the Tuskegee school 
loose in the streets, and run the thermometer up to 120 in the 
shade. Set a fringe of the Rocky Mountains around the rear, 
let it rain, and set the whole business on Rockaway Beach in the 
middle of January — and you'd have a good imitation of Espiritu.* 

But it is in his references to American cities that 0. 
Henry's feeling for the city as a unit is best revealed. 
It has been said of George Eliot that her passion for 
individualizing was so great that a character is rarely 
introduced in her stories, even if he only says "Break- 
fast is served," without being separated in some way 
from the other characters. The same may be said of 
O. Henry's mention of American towns and cities. 
Sometimes the differentiation is diffused through the 
story from beginning to end. Sometimes it is sum- 
marized in a phrase or paragraph. Of our same Hag- 
gles it is said: 

Chicago seemed to swoop down upon him with a breezy sug- 
gestion of Mrs. Partington, plumes, and patchouli, and to disturb 
his rest with a soaring and beautiful song of future promise. But 
Raggles would awake to a sense of shivering cold and a haunting 



♦From "On Behalf of the Management." . 

229 



( 



O. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 



impression of ideals lost in a depressing aura of potato salad and 
fish. 

Pittsburg impressed him as the play of "Othello" performed 
in the Russian language in a railroad station by Dockstader's 
minstrels. A royal and generous lady this Pittsburg, though — 
homely, hearty, with flushed face, washing the dishes in a silk 
dress and white kid slippers, and bidding Raggles sit before the 
roaring fireplace and drink champagne with his pigs' feet and fried 
potatoes. 

New Orleans had simply gazed down upon him from a balcony. 
He could see her pensive, starry eyes and catch the flutter of her 
fan, and that was all. Only once he came face to face with her. 
It was at dawn, when she was flushing the red bricks of the ban- 
quette with a pail of water. She laughed and hummed a chan- 
sonette and filled Raggles's shoes with ice-cold water. Allons! 

Boston construed herself to the poetic Raggles in an erratic 
and singular way. It seemed to him that he had drunk cold 
tea and that the city was a white, cold cloth that had 
been bound tightly around his brow to spur him to some 
unknown but tremendous mental effort. And, after all, he came 
to shovel snow for a livelihood; and the cloth, becoming wet, 
tightened its knots and could not be removed. 

In "A Municipal Report," 0. Henry answers the 
challenge of Frank Norris who had said : 

Fancy a novel about Chicago or Buffalo, let us say, or Nashville, 
Tennessee! There are just three big cities in the United States 
that are "story cities" — New York, of course, New Orleans, and. 
best of the lot, San Francisco. 

O. Henry replies: 

But, dear cousins all (from Adam and Eve descended), it is a 
rash one who will lay his finger on the map and say: "In this 
town there can be no romance — what could happen here? Yes, 
230 



FAVOURITE THEMES 

it is a bold and a rash deed to challenge in one sentence history, 
romance, and Rand and McNally. 

Then follows a story of Nashville, Tennessee, which 
0. Henry had visited when his daughter was attending 
Belmont College. "For me," writes Mr. Albert Fred- 
erick Wilson, of New York University, "it is the 
finest example of the short story ever produced in 
America." "If the reader is not satisfied," says Mr. 
Stephen Leacock, after attempting to summarize "Jeff 
Peters as a Personal Magnet" and "The Furnished 
Room," "let him procure for himself the story called 
'A Municipal Report' in the volume 'Strictly Busi- 
ness.' After he has read it he will either pronounce 
O. Henry one of the greatest masters of modern fiction 
or else, well, or else he is a jackass. Let us put it that 
way." 

The story ends on the note with which it began: 
"I wonder what's doing in Buffalo?" It is 0. Henry's 
most powerful presentation of his conviction that to 
the seeing eye all cities are story cities. It is the appeal 
of an interpretative genius from statistics to life, from 
the husks of a municipality as gathered by Rand and 
McNally to the heart of a city as seen by an artist. 

But it happened to O. Henry as it had happened to 
Raggles : 

One day he came and laid siege to the heart of the great city ol 

Manhattan. She was the greatest of all; and he wanted to learn 

28] 



O. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 

her note in the scale; to taste and appraise and classify and solve 
and label her and arrange her with the other cities that had given 
him up the secret of their individuality. 

In "The Voice of the City," 0. Henry approaches 
New York as did Raggles via other cities: 

"I must go and find out," I said, "what is the Voice of this 
city. Other cities have voices. It is an assignment. I must 
have it. New York," I continued, in a rising tone, "had better 
not hand me a cigar and say: 'Old man, I can't talk for publica- 
tion.' No other city acts in that way. Chicago says, unhesitat- 
ingly, 'I will'; Philadelphia says, 'I should'; New Orleans says, 'I 
used to'; Louisville says, 'Don't care if I do'; St. Louis says, 'Ex- 
cuse me'; Pittsburg says, 'Smoke up.' Now, New York " 

0. Henry's synonyms for New York and his photo- 
graphic descriptions of special streets and squares have 
often been commented upon. Mr. Arthur Bartlett 
Maurice says again:* 

In the course of this rambling pilgrimage, the name of Sydney 
Porter has appeared, and will very likely continue to appear, two 
or three times to one mention of any other one writer. This is 
due not only to the high esteem in which the pilgrim holds the 
work of that singular and gifted man, but also to the fact that the 
dozen volumes containing the work of O. Henry constitute a kind 
of convenient bank upon which the pilgrim is able to draw in the 
many moments of emergency. Perfect frankness is a weapon 
with which to forestall criticism, and so, to express the matter 



*"The New York of the Novelists: The Heart of O. Henry Land" (the Bookman, New York, 
December, 1915). 

232 



\ 




FAVOURITE THEMES 

very bluntly, whenever the writer finds himself in a street or a 
neighbourhood about which there is little apparent to say, he 
turns to "The Four Million, " or "The Trimmed Lamp," or "The 
Voice of the City," or "Whirligigs," or "Strictly Business," and 
in one of these books is able to find the rescuing allusion or descrip- 
tive line. 



But 0. Henry's study went far deeper than "the 
rescuing allusion or descriptive line." "I would like 
to live a lifetime," he once said to Mr, Gilman Hall, 
"on each street in New York. Every house has a 
drama in it." Indeed the most distinctive and cer- 
tainly the most thought-provoking aspect of 0. Henry's 
portrayal of New York is not to be found in his descrip- 
tions. It lies rather in his attempt to isolate and vivify 
the character, the service, the function of the city. 
Streets, parks, squares, buildings, even the multitu- 
dinous life itself that flowed ceaselessly before him were 
to him but the outward and visible signs of a life, a 
spirit, that informed all and energized all. 

But what was it? O. Henry would seem to say, 
"It is not a single element, like oxygen or hydrogen or 
gold. It is a combination, a formula, compounded of 
several elements." In "Squaring the Circle" we learn 
that a Kentucky feud of forty years' standing had left 
but a single member of each family, Cal Harkness and 
Sam Folwell. Cal has moved to New York. Sam, 
armed to the teeth, follows him. It was Sam's first 

233 



O. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 

day in New York. Loneliness smote him; a fat man 
wouldn't answer him; a policeman told him to move 
along; an immense engine, "running without mules/' 
grazed his knee; a cab-driver bumped him and "ex- 
plained to him that kind words were invented to be 
used on other occasions"; a motorman went the cab- 
driver one better; a large lady dug an elbow into his 
back. But at last the bloody and implacable foe of 
his kith and kin is seen. 



He stopped short and wavered for a moment, being unarmed 
and sharply surprised. But the keen mountaineer's eye of Sam 
Folwell had picked him out. 

There was a sudden spring, a ripple in the stream of passers-by, 
and the sound of Sam's voice crying: 

"Howdy, Cal ! I'm durned glad to see ye." 

And in the angles of Broadway, Fifth Avenue and Twenty-third 
Street the Cumberland feudists shook hands. 



The city had achieved in one day what a whole State 
had been powerless to do in forty years. It had done 
the impossible: it had squared the circle. No mere 
description could set New York forth as does this story. 
We have here to do not with the form of a great city 
but with its function. 

Let us return to Haggles once more. The story is 
" The Making of a New Yorker." Haggles was a tramp. 



FAVOURITE THEMES 
His specialty was cities. But New York was impene- 
trable. 



Other cities had been to him as long primer to read; as country 
maidens quickly to fathom; as send-price-of-subscription-with 
answer rebuses to solve; as oyster cocktails to swallow; but here 
was one as cold, glittering, serene, impossible as a four-carat 
diamond in a window to a lover outside fingering damply in his 
pocket his ribbon-counter salary. 

The greetings of the other cities he had known — their homespun 
kindliness, their human gamut of rough charity, friend y curses, 
garrulous curiosity, and easily estimated credulity or indifference. 
This city of Manhattan gave him no clue; it was walled against 
him. Like a river of adamant it flowed past him in the streets. 
Never an eye was turned upon him; no voice spoke to him. His 
heart yearned for the clap of Pittsburg's sooty hand on his shoul- 
der; for Chicago's menacing but social yawp in his ear; for the pale 
and eleemosynary stare through the Bostonian eyeglass — even 
for the precipitate but unmalicious boot-toe of Louisville or St. 
Louis. 



Three types of character seem to Raggles about all 
that New York has: the elderly rich gentleman; the 
beautiful, steel-engraving woman; the swaggering, grim, 
threateningly sedate fellow; but all are heartless, frigid, 
unconcerned. He hates them and the city that pro- 
duces them. A roar, a hiss, a crash — and Raggles has 
been struck by an automobile. The three impersonal 
types are at his side in a moment. They bend over him, 
put silks and furs under his head, and the threateningly 
sedate fellow brings a glass full of a crimson fluid thai 



O. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 

suggested infinite things to the fractured Raggles. A 
reporter, a surgeon, and an ambulance take him in tow. 

In three days they let him leave his cot for the convalescent 
ward in the hospital. He had been in there an hour when the 
attendants hear sounds of conflict. Upon investigation they 
found that Raggles had assaulted and damaged a brother con- 
valescent — a glowering transient whom a freight train collision 
had sent in to be patched up. 

"What's all this about?" inquired the head nurse. 

"He was runnin' down me town," said Raggles. 

"What town?" asked the nurse. 

"Noo York," said Raggles. 

Is not that a gaze into the very heart of the city? On 
the surface, cold, hard, oblivious, greedy; but beneath 
the surface, kindly, cooperative, organized for every 
need, efficient for instant help, human to the core. 

Read again "The Duel" in which 0. Henry declares 
his theme to be the one particular in which " New York 
stands unique among the cities of the world. " Turn once 
more to the volume called "The Voice of the City," 
and weigh it as an answer to the query propounded in 
the story from which it takes its name. Beneath the 
humour of stories like these, beneath the cleverness of 
phrase and the fitness of epithet, there is a solid sub- 
stratum of thought, a determined attempt to body forth 
the thing as it really is, a saturation with a central 
idea, unequalled, we believe, by any other writer who 
has tried to find adequate predicates for city subjects. 
236 



FAVOURITE THEMES 
But before 0. Henry had seen New York, lie was busy 
with another theme that was to occupy much of his 
thought in later years. Some one said to him shortly 
before the end: "Your heart is in your Wes tern 
stories." "My heart is in heaven," he replied. Had 
he committed himself I think he would have said: "My 
heart just now is neither in my Western nor my North- 
ern nor my Southern stories. It is in the stories that 
are not exclusively any one of the three. I mean the 
stories that try to contrast the South with the North 
or the North with the West and to indicate what is 
separate and characteristic in each." Here again both 
notebooks bear testimony to the tenacity with which 
this subject laid hold upon 0. Henry's thinking. The 
Columbus notebook contains the entry : 

Duplicity of Hargraves * 
Munsey 8/16 

The New York notebook reads: 

Old darkey — difference between Yankee and Southerner 

— N.Y.f 

That there is a difference every lover of his country 
ought to be glad to admit. Time was when we called 
these differences sectional. A better term is regional. 



♦The story was published in the Junior Munsey, February, 1902. 

tSee "Thimble, Thimble," published in Hampton's Magazine, December, 1908. 



O. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 

Sectional implies not only difference but antagonism; 
it recalls oratory, war, and politics. Regional differ- 
ences suggest neither actual nor potential conflict. Such 
differences are allies of literature. They make for 
variety in unity and unity in variety. Sectional dif- 
ferences mean "We dislike one another." Regional 
differences mean "We are unlike one another." No- 
where does O. Henry's insight into human nature, his 
breadth and depth, his pervasive humour, or his essen- 
tial Americanism show more clearly than in such 
stories as "The Duplicity of Hargraves," "The Cham- 
pion of the Weather," "New York by Campflre Light," 
"The Pride of the Cities," "From Each According to 
His Ability," "The Rose of Dixie," "The Discounters of 
Money," "Thimble, Thimble," and "Best-Seller." In 
each of these he stages a contrast between the North 
and the South or the North and the W T est. 

The task was not an original one but he did it in an 
original way. Since 1870 American literature has 
abounded in short stories, novels, and plays that are 
geographical not only in locale but in spirit and content. 
"If the reader," writes Mr. Howells, "will try to think 
what the state of polite literature (as they used to call 
it in the eighteenth century) would now be among us, 
if each of our authors had studied to ignore, as they have 
each studied to recognize, the value of the character 
and tradition nearest about them, I believe he will 
238 



..FAVOURITE THEMES 

agree with me that we owe everything that we now are 
in literature to their instinct of vicinage." But (lie 
"instinct of vicinage" usually confines the author to a 
single place or a single section. His work attempts to 
portray Western life or Southern life or New England 
life, but one at a time. The actual contrasting is dour 
by the reader, who compares author with author or 
story with story and passes judgment accordingly. 

A notable exception is " The Great Divide." William 
Vaughn Moody has here in a single brief play not only 
represented the West in Stephen Ghent and New Eng- 
land in Ruth Jordan but himself outlined the contrast 
in their blended careers. "If Massachusetts and Ari- 
zona ever get in a mix-up in there," says Mrs. Jordan, 
pointing toward Ruth's heart, "woe be!" They do 
get in a mix-up in there and every American is the gainer. 
Our very Americanism and sense of national solidarity 
are quickened and clarified as we watch the struggle 
between these two characters. Their union at last 
seems to assure the worth of our constituent parts and 
to prophesy a nationalism that will endure. 

A somewhat similar contest is fought out in Owen 
Wister's novel, "The Virginian." Molly Wood, of 
Bennington, Vermont, and the Virginian, of Wyoming, 
have more than a purely individual interest. They 
stand for two kinds of regional fidelity thai have gone 
into the very fibre of American life. Mr. Wister even 



O. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 

makes the Virginian himself essay a distinction between 
the East and the West: 

Now back East you can be middling and get along. But if 
you go to try a thing on in this Western country, you've got to do 
it well. You've got to deal cyards well; you've got to steal well; 
and if you claim to be quick with your gun you must be quick, 
for you're a public temptation, and some man will not resist trying 
to prove he is the quicker. You must break all the Command- 
ments well in this Western country, and Shorty should have 
stayed in Brooklyn, for he will be a novice his livelong days. 

And over Shorty's dead body the Virginian remarks: 
"There was no natural harm in him, but you must do a 
thing well in this country, " meaning in Wyoming. 

Before the advent of 0. Henry, however, short story 
writers had fought shy of essaying such a contrast with- 
in the narrow limits of a single story, a contrast for 
which the drama and the novel seemed better fitted. 
Bret Harte and Hamlin Garland, Sarah Orne Jewett 
and Mrs. Wilkins-Freeman, Thomas Nelson Page and 
Joel Chandler Harris, and a score of others had proved 
that the short story could be made to represent as large 
a territory as the novel. But as an instructed delegate 
each short story preferred to speak for only one con- 
stituency. When it tried to represent two at the same 
time, there was apt to be a glorification of the one and 
a caricature of the other. 

It is one of O. Henry's distinctions that he is fair to 
both. The Nation* called attention a few months be- 

*For December 2, 1909. 

240 



FAVOURITE THEMES 
fore his death to his "genial and equal-handed satin of 
the confronted Northern and Southern foibles." Wesl - 
ern foibles might also have been included. 0. Henry 
is "genial and equal-handed" not only in the charac- 
teristics selected but in the way he pits characteristic 
against characteristic, foible against foible, an excess 
against a defect, then again a defect against an excess. 
Art and heart are so blended in these contrasts, wide 
and liberal observation is so allied to shrewd but kindly 
insight, that the reader hardly realizes the breadth of 
the theme or the sureness of the author's footing. 

0. Henry was not a propagandist, but one cannot re- 
read these stories without feeling that here as elsewhere 
the story teller is much more than a mere entertainer. 
He has suggested a nationalism in which North, 
West, and South are to play their necessary parts. 
It is not a question of surrender or abdication; it is a 
question rather of give and take. We may laugh as we 
please at Major Pendleton Talbot of "the old, old 
South" in "The Duplicity of Hargraves." He erred 
no more on one side than did Hargraves on the other. 
That Hargraves should not have known that he was 
wounding the Major's feelings shows a want of tact as 
onesided on his part as was the Major's excess of pride on 
his. 

"I am truly sorry you took offence," said Hargraves regretfully. 
"Up here we don't look at things just as von people do. I know 



O. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 

men who would buy out half the house to have their personality 
put on the stage so the public would recognize it.'* 

"They are not from Alabama, sir," said the Major haughtily. 

And every reader applauds. But the applause at the 
end, where Hargraves shows a tact and nobleness be- 
yond what we had thought possible, is still more prompt 
and generous. The keynote of the story is not section- 
alism but reciprocity. 

There is the same absence of mere caricature in "The 
Rose of Dixie." In his New York notebook O. Henry 
made the entry: "Southern Magazine. All contribu- 
tors relatives of Southern distinguished men." But 
the story as it shaped itself in his mind became not 
merely a burlesque of the hopelessly provincial maga- 
zine but a contrast between authorship by ancestry and 
publication by push. Is not the laugh genially distrib- 
uted between Colonel Aquila Telfair, of Toombs City, 
Georgia, and T. T. Thacker, of New York? 

Perhaps in "The Pride of the Cities" the reader will 
be inclined to think that the man from Topaz City, 
Arizona, overplays the Westernism of his part. Per- 
haps he does. But his provocation was great. The 
conversation, you remember, had opened as follows : 

"Been in the city long?" inquired the New Yorker, getting 
ready the exact tip against the waiter's coming with large change 
from the bill. 

" Me ? " said the man from Topaz City. "Four days. Never in 
Topaz City was you?" 
242 



FAVOURITE THEMES 

"I!" said the New Yorker. "I was never farther west than 
Eighth Avenue. I had a brother who died on Ninth, bill I met 
the cortege at Eighth. There was a bunch of violets on the hearse, 

and the undertaker mentioned the incident to avoid mistake. 
I cannot say that I am familiar with the West." 

But each theme that has been mentioned is but an 
illustration of that larger quest in which all of O. Henry's 
stories find their common meeting-place — the search 
for those common traits and common impulses which 
together form a sort of common denominator of our 
common humanity. Many of his two hundred and 
fifty stories are impossible; none, rightly considered, are 
improbable. They are so rooted in the common soil 
of our common nature that even when dogs or monu- 
ments do the talking we do the thinking. The theme 
divisions that we have attempted to make are, after all, 
only sub-divisions. The ultimate theme is your nature 
and mine. 

It is too soon to attempt to assign O. Henry a com- 
parative rank among his predecessors. We may at- 
tempt, however, to place him if not to weigh him. It 
was Washington Irving who first gave the American 
short story a standing at home and abroad. There is a 
calm upon Irving's pages, an easy quiet grace in his 
sentences, an absence of restlessness and hurry, that 
give him an unquestioned primacy among our masters 
of an elder day. He was more meditative and less 

intellectual than Scott but, like Scott, he was essentially 

•j i.; 



O. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 

retrospective. He used the short story to rescue and 
re-launch the small craft of legend and tradition which 
had already upon their sails the rime of eld. He leg- 
endized the short story. 

Poe's genius was first and last constructive. It was 
the build of the short story rather than its historical 
or intellectual content that gripped his interest. Poe's- 
art, unlike that of Irving, is identified with no particular 
time or place. He was always stronger on moods than 
on tenses, and his geography curtsied more to sound 
than to Mercator or Maury. But in the mathematics 
of the short story, in the art of making it converge def- 
initely and triumphantly to a pre-ordained end, in the 
mastery of all that is connoted by the word technique, 
Poe's is the greatest name. The short story came 
from his hands a new art form, not charged with a new 
content but effectively equipped for a new service. In 
his equal exercise .of executive, legislative, and judi- 
cial authority, Poe standardized the short story. 

Hawthorne made the short story a vehicle of sym- 
bolism. Time and place were only starting-points with 
him. He saw double, and the short story was made to 
see double, too. Puritan New England, New England 
of the past, was his locale; but his theme was spiritual 
truth, a theme that has always had an affinity for 
symbols and symbolism. Hawthorne allegorized the 
short story. 
244 



FAVOURITE THEMES 
With Bret Harte the short story entered a new era. 
He was the first of our short story writers to preempt 
a definite and narrowly circumscribed time and place 
and to lift both into literature. Dialect became for the 
first time an effective ally of the American short story, 
and local colour was raised to an art. Though Bivl 
Harte's appeal is not and has never been confined to 
any one section or to any one country, it is none the 1« 
true that he first successfully localized the American 
short story. 

A glance through 0. Henry's pages shows that his 
familiarity with the different sections of the United 
States was greater than that of any predecessor named. 
He had lived in every part of the country that may be 
called distinctive except New England, but he has 
not preempted any locality. His stories take place in 
Latin America, in the South, in the West, and in the 
North. He always protested against having his stories 
interpreted as mere studies in localism. There was 
not one of his New York stories, he said, in which the 
place was essential to the underlying truth or to the 
human interest back of it. Nor was his technique dis- 
tinctive. It is essentially the technique of Poe which 
became later the technique of De Maupassant but was 
modified by 0. Henry to meet new needs and to sub- 
serve diverse purposes. 0. Henry has humanized the 

short story. 

245 



CHAPTER NINE 

LAST DAYS 

"I CANNOT help remarking," wrote Alexander Pope 
to a Mr. Blount, "that sickness, which often destroys 
both wit and wisdom, yet seldom has power to remove 
that talent which we call humour." In O. Henry's 
case sickness affected neither his wit nor his humour 
but it made creative work hard and irksome. There is 
as much wit and humour in his last complete story, 
"Let Me Feel Your Pulse," or "Adventures in Neu- 
rasthenia," as in any story that he wrote, but the ending 
of no other story was so difficult to him. Plans for a 
novel and a play were also much in his mind at this 
time but no progress was made in actual construction. 

In fact, O. Henry had been a very sick man for more 
than a year before his death. "He had not been well 
for a long time," writes Mrs. Porter, referring to the 
time of their marriage, "and had got behind with his 
work." He did not complain but sought creative 
invigoration in frequent changes of environment. 
Early in 1909, however, his letters begin to show that 
writer's cramp was with him only another name for 
failing health. From his workshop in the Caledonia, 
246 



LAST DAYS 
lie writes to Mr. Henry W. Lanier, who was then 
secretary to Doubleday , Page & Company : 

February 13, 1909. 
My Dear Mr. Lanier: 

I've been ailing for a month or so — can't sleep, etc.; and haven't 
turned out a piece of work in that time. Consequently there 
is a hiatus in the small change pocket. I hope to be in shape 
Monday so that I can go to Atlantic City, immure myself in a 
quiet hotel, and begin to get the "great novel" in shape. 

March 16, 1909. 
It seems that the goddess Hygiene and I have been strangers 
for years; and now Science must step in and repair the damage. 
My doctor is a miracle worker and promises that in a few weeks 
he will double my working capacity, which sounds very good 
both for me and for him, when the payment of the bill is considered. 

April 6, 1909. 
I hope to get the novel in good enough shape to make an "ex- 
hibit " of it to you soon. I've been feeling so rocky for so long 
that I haven't been able to produce much. In fact, I've noticed 
now and then some suspicious tracks outside the door that closely 
resembled those made by Lupus Americanus. Has anything 
accrued around the office in the royalty line that you could put 
your finger on to-day? 

In the fall of 1909, broken in health and suffering 
greatly from depression, he went to Asheville to be 
with his wife and daughter. Here on the fifth story 
of a building on Patton Avenue he set up his workshop. 
Ideas were plentiful but the power to mould them as he 
knew he once could have moulded them lagged behind. 

847 



0. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 

Many themes appealed alternately to him for his pro- 
posed novel and play but only bare outlines remain. 
"I want to get at something bigger," he would say. 
"What I have done is child's play to what I can do, 
to what I know it is in me to do. If I would debase it, 
as some of the fellows do, I could get out something. 
I could turn out some sort of trash but I can't do that." 
To Harry Peyton Steger he writes from Asheville, 
November 5, 1909: 

My Dear Colonel Steger: I'd have answered your letter 
but I've been under the weather with a slight relapse. But on 
the whole I'm improving vastly. I've a doctor here who says I 
have absolutely no physical trouble except neurasthenia and that 
outdoor exercise and air will fix me as good as new. I am twenty 
pounds lighter and can climb mountains like a goat. 

But his Little Old Bagdad-on-the-Subway was calling 
to him and had called during every waking hour of his 
absence. He had made his last attempt to write 
beyond the sound of her voice. In March he was back 
in his old haunts. To Mr. James P. Crane, of Chicago, 
he writes. April 15, 1910: 

I'm back in New York after a six months' stay in the mountains 
near Asheville, North Carolina. I was all played out — nerves, 
etc. I thought I was much better and came back to New York 
about a month ago and have been in bed most of the time — 
didn't pick up down there as well as I should have done. There 
was too much scenery and fresh air. What I need is a steam- 
heated flat with no ventilation or exercise. 
248 



LAST DAYS 

The end was near but not much nearer, I think, than 
he knew. To Mr. Moyle he remarked with a shrug 
of the shoulders and a whimsical smile: "It'll probably 
be 'In the Good Old Summer Time/ " A few years be- 
fore, the question of the after-life had come up casually 
in conversation and O. Henry had been asked what he 
thought of it. His reply was: 

I had a little dog 

And his name was Rover, 
And when he died 

He died all over. 

During the last months the question emerged again. 
An intimate friend's father had died and O. Henry was 
eager to know how he had felt about the hereafter. 
"For myself," he said, "I think we are like little 
chickens tapping on their shells." 

On the afternoon of June 3, Mr. Gilman Hall received 
a telephone message: "Can you come down right away, 
Colonel?" His friends were all Colonel or Bill to him. 
He had collapsed after sending the message and was 
lying on the floor when Mr. Hall arrived. Dr. Charles 
Russell Hancock was sent for and O. Henry was taken 
at once to the Polyclinic Hospital on East Thirty- 
fourth Street. "You're a poor barber, Doc," he whis- 
pered, as Dr. Hancock was brushing his hair; "let me 
show you." He insisted on stopping to shake hands 

249 



O. HENRY BIOGRAPHY 

with the manager of the Caledonia and to exchange a 
cheery good-bye. He asked that his family be sent 
for and then quietly gave directions about the disposi- 
tion of his papers. 

Just before entering the hospital the friend who was 
with him, anticipating his aversion to the newspaper 
publicity inseparable from his pen-name, asked what 
name should be announced. "Call me Dennis,' ' he 
said; "my name will be Dennis in the morning." Then 
becoming serious he added: "No, say that Will S. — 
Parker is here." The taking again of the old initials 
and the name "Will," said 0. Henry's friend, was a 
whim of the moment and a whim of the most whimsical 
of men, but it was "prompted by the desire to die with 
the name and initials given him at birth and endeared 
by every memory of childhood and home." 

"He was perfectly conscious until within two min- 
utes of his death Sunday morning," said Doctor Han- 
cock, "and knew that the end was approaching. I 
never saw a man pluckier in facing it or in bearing 
pain. Nothing appeared to worry him at the last." 
There was no pain now and just before sunrise he said 
with a smile to those about him: "Turn up the lights; 
I don't want to go home in the dark." He died as he 
had lived. His last words touched with new beauty 
and with new hope the refrain of a concert-hall song, 
the catch-word of the street, the jest of the department 
250 



LAST DAYS 

store. He did not go home in the dark. The sun- 
light was upon his face when he passed and ilium in- 
still his name and fame. 

After the funeral in the Little Church Around the 
Corner, a woman was seen to remain alone kneeling in 
prayer. She was one whom O. Henry had rescued from 
the undertow of the city and restored. "I have al- 
ways believed, " says a gifted writer, "thai it was not 
by accident that a wreath of laurel lay at the head of 
his coffin and a wreath of lilies at his feet." 



THE END 



INDEX 



"Adventures in Neurasthenia." See 

"Let Me Feel Your Pulse." 
"Afternoon Miracle, An," 99, 170 
Ainslees Magazine, 172, 175 
Alberti, Senor, 193 
"Alias Jimmy Valentine." See "A 

Retrieved Reformation" 
Allen, James Lane, 11, 195 
American Magazine, The, 10, 217 
"Anatomy of Melancholy," 76, 90 
Anderson, Charles E., 118, 121 
"Arabian Nights," The, 76, 90 
Armstrong, Paul, 193 
Artemus Ward, 134, 178 
"Artist,. An," 209 
Atlantic Monthly, The, 11, 68 
Auerbach, B,. 90 

Bagley, Worth, 35 

Bangs, John Kendrick, 127 

Barry, John II., 16 

Beall, Dr. W. P., 106, 109, 113 

Beauregard, General P. G. T., 58 

"Best-Seller," 238 

"Bexar Scrip No. 2692," 119 

Bill Nye, 127, 130, 133, 134 

Bingham, Col. Robert , 82 

"Birth of a Nation, The," 62 

"Blackjack Bargainer, A," 170 

"Blind Man's Holiday," 138 

Bookman, The, 117, 137, 170, 173, 175, 

194, 217, 221, 232 
Boston Traveller, The, 61 
Bray, Sir Edward, 24 
Bray, Thomas, 24 



"Brickdust Row," 223 
Brockman, Ed., 110 
Brown, John, 64 
Browning, Robert, 207 
Bulla, J. R., 39 
"Buried Treasure," 58, 119 
Bumside, General A. E., 59 
Bynner, Witter, 8 

"Cabbages and Kings," 194-199, 
"Caballero's Way, The," 78, 99 
"Cactus, The," 169 
Caine, Hall, 184 
Caldwell, David, 52-56 
"Caliph and the Cad, The," 206 
"Caliph, Cupid, and the Clock, 

206 
Campion, Miss Marguerite, 46 
Canby, Henry Seidel, 11 
Carbry, Mrs.. 25 
Carter, Anne Hill, 24 
Cartland, Fernando G., 21 
Caruthers, Dr. Eli W., 54 
"Champion of the Weather, The, 
Charles II. 23 

"Cherchez La Fcinme," 188 
Chicago Herald, The, 61 
Church Society. 90 
Cole, C. C, 30 
Cole, Dr. J. L.. SO 
Coleman, Miss SaDie. 8m Mrs 

Coleman Porter. 
Coleman. Mrs. Thaddeus. 190 
Collins, Wilkic. <><> 
"Comedy in Rubber, A." 



201 



'II 












INDEX 

'* Complete Life of John Hopkins, The," 

213 
Concept, The, 78 
Concord Monitor, The, 61 
Connors, Jimmy, 151-152, 192 
Conrad, Joseph, 145 
Cooke, John Esten, 30, 91 
Cosmopolitan, The, 116, 192 
Cox, General John D., 58, 59 
Crane, James P., 126, 128, 248 
Crane, Stephen, 11 
Craven, Dr. Braxton, 41 
Cromwell, Oliver, 23 
Cullen, Clarence L., 181 

Daily Express, The, 96 
Daily Record, The, 42 
Daniel, Martitia, 34 
Daniels, D., 117, 127 
Davies, Sir John, 205 
Davis, Jefferson, 58, 59 
Davis, Richard Harding, 194 
Deems, Charles F., 28 
Detroit Free Press, The, 5, 123 
Dial, The, 192 
"Dick Lightheart," 77 
Dick, Reuben, 36 
Dick, Judge Robert P., 60 
Dick, Mrs. Robert P., 43 
Dickens, Charles, 12, 62, 90, 91, 219, 222 
.Dillard, John H., 44 
"Discounters of Money, The," 238 
Dixon, Joe, 105 
Dixon, Thomas, 62 
"Duel," The, 236 
Duffy, Richard, 172, 173, 175, 176 
Dumas, Alexander, 90 
"Duplicity of Hargraves, The," 170, 
237, 238, 241 

Edgeworth, Maria, 56 
Elgin, John E., 96 
"Elsie in New York," 219 



Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 14 
"Enchanted Kiss, The," 128, 170, 210 
Estes, Miss Athol. See Mrs. William 

Sydney Porter. 
Evans, C. N. B., 31 
Everybody's Magazine, 169, 172 
Ewing, John, 194 
"Extradited from Bohemia," 188 

Father Ryan, 75 

"Ferry of Unfulfilment, The," 208 

Field, Eugene, 134. See poem on p. 

132 
Fletcher, John, 134 
"Fog in Santone," 128, 170 
Folger, Peter, 38 
"Fool-Killer, The," 31 
Forman, Henry James, 11 
Foulcher, A., 192 
"Four Million, The," 77, 200, 233 
Franklin, Benjamin, 38 
"From Each According to his Ability," 

238 
"From the Cabby's Seat," 208 
Froude, J. A., 224 
"Furnished Room, The," 231 

Galsworthy, John, 10 

Garland, Hamlin, 240 

Garnett, Edward, 11 

"Gentle Grafter, The," 21, 147, 149, 

201 
George Eliot, 83, 229 
"Georgia's Ruling," 119, 162, 170 
Ghent, W. J., 10 
"Gift of the Magi, The," 122 
Gilmer, John A., 60 
"Girl and the Habit, The," 208 
Goodloe, Daniel R., 22 
Graham, E. K., 31 
Gray, Julius A., 112 
"Great Divide, The," 239 
Green, Anna Katharine, 195 









"Green Door, The," 209, 213 
Greene, General Nathanael, 48 
"Guilty Party, The," 220, 221 

Hale, Edward J., 31 

Hall, Frank, 93 

Hall, Gilman, 172, 173, 175, 176, 181, 

182, 214, 233 
Hall, Dr. J. K., 88, 93, 94, 113 
Hall, Mrs. J. K., 106, 109, 111 
Hall, Lee, 93, 95-100 
Hall, Mrs. Lee, 98 
Hall, R. M., 93, 101, 114, 119, 125, 135» 

162 
Hall, Mrs. R. M., 52, 98, 100, 106, 
119 

Hampton's Magazine, 237 
Hancock, Dr. Charles Russell, 249, 250 
"Handbook of Hymen, The," 101 
"Harbinger, The," 208 
Harper's Weekly, 46, 193 
Harrell, Joe, 114 
Harris, Joel Chandler, 90, 240 
Harte, Bret, 13, 90, 195, 240, 245 
Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 11, 13, 195, 244 
"He Also Serves," 184 
"Heart of the West," 201 
"Hearts and Hands," 169 
Heartt, Dennis, 31 
Helper, Hinton Rowan, 21 
Henderson, Archibald, 32 
Herbert, Dr. Pinkney, 17 
"Hiding of Black Bill, The," 115 
"Higher Abdication, The," 102, 128 
Hill, William Laurie, 31, 54 
Hobbs, Alexander, 153 
Hogg, James, 125 

Houston Daily Post, The, 122, 129-134 
Howells, W. D., 11, 54, 238 
Hugo, Victor, 90 
Humphreys, Henry, 36 
"Hygeia at the Solito," 104, 128, 170 
"Hypothesis of Failure, The," 87 



INDEX 

Ilusiracidn Espaflola y Americana. La, 

193 
Irving, Washington, 13, 40, 243 
Irwin, Will, 18 

"Jack Harkaway," 77 

Jackson, Andrew, 50 

James, Henry, 187 

James, William, 11, 208, 209 

"Jeff Peters as a Personal Magnet," 231 

Jennings, Al, 139-141, 149 

Jennings, Frank, 139 

"Jesse Holmes," 31 

Jewett, Sarah One, 11, 240 

"Jimmy Samson." See "A Retrieved 

Reformation " 
"Jimmy Valentine." See " A Retrieved 

Reformation." 
"John Burleson," 62 
Johnston, General Joseph E., 58, 59 
Johnston, Mary, 195 
Johnston, Col. R. M., 129, 130 
Junior Munsey, The, 237 

"Katie of Frogmore Flats." See " The 

Pendulum" 
Kilpatrick, General H. J., 59 
King, Edward, 96, 97 
Kipling, Rudyard, 11, 12, 13 
Kreisle, Louis, 141 
Kreisle, Mrs. Louis, 141 

Lancaster, Robert A., Jr., 23 

Lanier, Henry W., 247 

Lea, Rev. Solomon, 29 

Leacock, Stephen, 9, 231 

Lee, Jesse M., 96 

Lee, Light Horse Harry, 24 

Lee, Robert E., 24, 58 

"Let Me Feel Your Pulse." 17, 246 

"Lickpenny Lover, A," 217 

Lieberman, Elias, 227 

Lindsay, Nicholas Vachel, 6, 217 

London Magazine, The, 192 



INDEX 



London Spectator, The, 195 
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, 51, 195 
"Looking Forward," 131 
"Lost Blend, The," 87 
"Lost on Dress Parade," 206 
"Lotus and the Bottle, The," 198 
Lytton, Bulwer, 90 

McClure's Magazine, 170 

"Madame Bo-Peep, of the Ranches," 

189, 191 
Maddox, John, 118 
"Madison Square Arabian Night, A," 

85 
"Makes the Whole World Kin," 84 
"Making of a New Yorker, The," 227, 

229, 234-236 
"Man About Town," 116 
"Marionettes, The," 170 
Mark Twain, 12, 48, 90, 195 
Marx, Karl, 10 
Maupassant, Guy de, 9, 12, 83, 204, 

209, 245 
Maurice, Arthur Bartlett, 173, 217, 232 
Mebane, John A., 35 
Memminger, C. G., 59 
"Miracle of Lava Canon, The," 124, 

169 
"Missing Chord, The," 104, 128 
Moliere, 4 

"Moment of Victory, The," 66 
"Money Maze," 170 
Moody, William Vaughn, 239 
Morehead, Gov. John Motley, 27, 56 
Morley, Christopher, 216 
Mosley, A., 123 
Moyle, Seth, 185, 249 
"Mr. Valentine's New Profession." 

See "A Retrieved Reformation." 
"Municipal Report, A," 75, 222, 230, 

231 
Munro, George, 89 
Murphey, Archibald D., 5Q 

256 



Nation, The, 12, 240 

Neio Jersey State Gazette, 49 

"New York by Campfire Light," 238 

New York Evening Post, The, 216 

New York Sun, The, 9, 181 

New York Times, The, 206 

New York World, The, 199, 200 

Norris, Frank, 230 

North American Review, The, 12 

"No Story," 170 

"On Behalf of the Management," 229 
O. Henry, each story an autobiography, 
3-7; birth, 8; the O. Henry myth, 8-9; 
tributes to his genius, 9-13; the 
people's writer, 13-15; maternal 
grandfather, 18-22; maternal grand- 
mother, 22-25; mother, 25-33; pater- 
nal grandfather, 33-38 paternal 
grandmother, 38-41; father, 41-45; 
Greensboro, North Carolina, 46-66; 
early incidents and influences, 66-71; 
education, 71-80; in his uncle's drug 
store, 80-89; his reading, 89-91; goes 
to Texas with Red Hall, 93-95; Red 
Hall, 95-100; on the La Salle County 
ranch, 100-114; in Austin, 114-129; 
in Houston, 129-137; goes to Hon- 
duras, 137-139; in Central America, 
139-142; trial and conviction in 
Austin, 143-146; in prison, 146-171; 
takes pen-name O. Henry, 169; goes 
to Pittsburg, 172; goes to New York, 
173-176; in New York, 176-202; 
themes and technique, 203-206; "turn- 
ing the tables on Haroun al Raschid," 
206-207; stories of habit, 207-209; 
"What's around the corner," 209-216; 
stories of working girls, 216-226; 
city stories, 226-236; regional stories, 
237-243; comparison with prede- 
cessors, 243-245; failing health, 246- 
247; goes to Asheville, 247-248; re- 



turns to New York, 248-249; in the 
Polyclinic Hospital, 249-250; death, 
250-231 

"Options," 201, 202 

Outlook, The, 162 

Page, Arthur W., 105 

Page, Thomas Nelson, 240 

Partlan, Miss Anne, 185-187 

"Passing of Black Eagle, The," 208 

Pater, Walter, 204 

Patmore, Coventry, 225 

Patriot, The, 19, 25, 26 

Peck, Judge Epaphroditus, 33 

"Pendulum, The," 208 

"Penny Plain and Twopence Colored," 

89 
Phelps, William Lyon, 12 
Picayune, The, 169 
Pitkin, Walter B., 203 
Poe, Edgar Allan, 9, 11, 13, 83, 195, 204, 

244, 245 
Pope, Alexander, 246 
Porter, Algernon Sidney, father of O. 

Henry, 40-44 
Porter, Mrs. Algernon Sidney, mother 

of O. Henry, 25-33, 171 
Porter, Clark, 41, 80, 81, 83, 87 
Porter, David W f eir, 40 
Porter, Jane, 90 
Porter, Miss Lina, 0. Henry's aunt, 

40, 71-77 
Porter, Mrs. Sara Coleman, O. Henry's 

second wife, 67, 173, 180, 182, 190- 

191, 246, 247 
Porter, Margaret W r orth (Mrs. Oscar 

E. Cesare), O. Henry's daughter, 125, 

141, 154, 158-166, 231, 247 
Porter, Shirley Worth, 40 
Porter, Sidney, paternal grandfather of 

O. Henry, 18, 33-38 
Porter, Mrs. Sidney, paternal grand- 
mother of O. Henry, 33, 38-41 



INDEX 

Porter, William Sydney. g« O. Henry. 

For spelling of Sydney see page* 18 

169 
Porter, Mrs. William Sydney, O. 

Henry's first wife, 120-123, 141-143 
Portland Advertiser, The, 02 
Prescott, W. H., 14 
"Pride of the Cities, The," 238, 212 



Read, Opie, 195 

Reade, Charles, 90, 91 

Reece, Joe, 42 

Reed, John S., 10 

"Renaissance of Charleroi, The," 138 

"Retrieved Reformation, A," 150-152, 

191-194, 206 
Roach, G. P., 120, 121, 154, 172 
Roach, Mrs. G. P., 120, 121, 146, 156, 

162,' 172, 201 
"Roads of Destiny," 201, 202, 211 
"Roads We Take, The," 212 
Rolling Stone, The, 119, 125-128, 135 
"Rolling Stones," 106, 201 
Rollins, Hyder E., 37, 137 
"Romance of a Busy Broker, The," 208 
"Rose of Dixie, The," 65, 238, 242 
"Rouge et Noir," 170 
"Round The Circle," 169 
Rumer, J. B., 153 

Schenck, Judge David, 39 
Schofield, General John M., 59 
Scott, David, 37, 42 
Scott, Walter, 90, 243 
Scribner's Monthly, 96 
Searles, Stanhope, 194 
"Seats of the Haughty," 128 
Shakespeare, 206, 218, 225 
Sherman, General W. T., 58 
"Ships," 198 

Shirley, Abia, maternal grandmother of 
0. Henry, 22, i5 

257 



i 



INDEX 



Shirley, Beatrix, 24 

Shirley, Daniel, 22 

Shirley, Nancy, 24 

Shirley, Sir Robert, 23 

Shirley, Sir Thomas, 23 

"Shoes," 198 

Sigourney, Mrs. Lydia Huntly, 30 

Simms, William Gilmore, 30 

"Sisters of the Golden Circle," 121 

"Sixes and Sevens," 201, 202 

Sloan, James, 35 

Smart Set, The, 190 

Smith, J. D., 79 

Smoot, Dr. R. K., 121 

Southern Woman's Magazine, 66 

Spielhagen, F., 91 

Spofford, A. R., 22 

"Squaring The Circle," 233 

Steger, Harry Peyton, 11G, 140, 201, 248 

"Stephen Hoyle," 02 

Stephens, Alexander H., 59 

Stevenson, Robert Louis, 13, 89 

Stonewall Jackson, 91 

"Strictly Business," 201, 202, 231, 233 

Stuart, General J. E. B., 91 

Sullivan, J. Clarence, 183 

Swaim, Lyndon, 22, 27 

Swaim, Mary Jane Virginia, maiden 
name of O. Henry's mother. See 
Mrs. Algernon Sidney Porter 

Swaim, William, maternal grandfather 
of O. Henry, 18-22 

Tarkington, Booth, 195 
Tate, Mrs. Henry, 29 
Tate, Thomas H., 66, 69, 79, 89 
Tennyson, Alfred, 100 
Thackeray, W. M., 62, 90 
"Thimble, Thimble," 237, 238 
"Third Ingredient, The," 185, 186 
Thomas, Dr. John M., 147, 154, 183 
Thoreau, Henry David, 11 
Times-Democrat, The, 169 

258 



Tourgee, Albion Winegar, 60-65 
Tourneur, Maurice, 193 
"Transients in Arcadia," 206 
"Trimmed Lamp, The." 201, 224-226 

233 
Truth, 4, 123 
"Two Renegades," 65 

"Unfinished Story, The," 185, 221-222, 
225 

Up-to-Date, 5 

"Venturers, The," 68, 210, 214, 216 
Villon, Francois, 12 
"Virginian, The," 239 
"Voice of the City, The," 201, 232. 233. 
236 

Walker, Mrs. Letitia, 59 

Warren, Samuel, 91 

Washburn, B. E., 194 

Weaver, Rufus W., 66 

Weir, Dr. David P., 43 

Wells, H. G., 10 

"While the Auto Waits," 206 

"Whirligigs," 162, 201, 202, 233 

"Whistling Dick's Christmas Stocking," 
138, 170 

Whitman, Walt, 11 

Wiley, Dr. Calvin H., 54 

Wilkins-Freeman, Mrs., 240 

Williard, Dr. George W. 149, 150, 192 

Wilson, A. F., 231 

Wister, Owen, 239 

"Witches' Loaves," 119 

Woodrow, Mrs. Wilson, 179 

Worth, Daniel, 21 

Worth, Dr. David, 34, 38 

Worth, John, 38 

Worth, Gov. Jonathan, 34, 38, 55, 61 

Worth, Ruth Coffyn, paternal grand- 
mother of O. Henry. See Mrs. 
Sidney Porter. 

Writer, The, 185 





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